Noun
Pronunciation: XXX 
Milk that has gone bad but hasn’t fully soured.

Compare kule nataroitie with kule naoto, which is milk that is fully soured and separated into curds and whey. Nataroitie is likely caused by bacteria that have been favored by a poorly cleaned lmala. This milk still looks good, but it will not taste good! A simulacrum! You discover kule nataroitie by accident. You find it out when you add to boiling tea and see the milk curdle upon contact or, if added to a cooler tea infusion, you discover the milk is off by the disappointment of the bad taste.

Kule nataroitie is a term we do not have in English. A synonym might be “rotten,” with the understanding that kule ntorok, the milk stage that follows and means absolutely intolerable and inedible rottenness, is also a vocabulary term English lacks.

When children are served kule nataroitie, they say “Papa mayeu!” (I don’t want!). Most people feed kule nataroitie to dogs, while everyone feeds kule ntorok to the dogs.

Return to the Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

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Published by William Rubel

I am an author who writes about traditional food and foodways. My book, The Magic of Fire (2002) is about hearth cooking. I have written an introductory history of bread, Bread, a global history (2011) and am currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press. Other areas of interest include wild mushrooms, and specifically the treatment of Amanita muscaria in the historic record. I also write about Early Modern British Gardens, and for a more general audience, I write for Mother Earth News on bread, gardening, and more. I have an ongoing research project into the smoke-cured fermented milk of the Kenyan Samburu tribe. I am a co-director of the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, Lengusaka. I am the founding editor (1972) of Stone Soup, the magazine of writing and art by young people.

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