Adjective
Pronunciation: keh-beh-bek’ 
Used to describe a thin mouthfeel, or milk diluted with water. The opposite of keirucha. 

By nature, this is a relative term.  Comparing milk textures, camel is the most kebekek, followed by cow, sheep, and goat. 

Milk texture changes seasonally. For example, cow milk, typically less kebekek than camel milk, is seasonally perceived as kebekek when rainy season fodder naturally dilutes its texture. The strongest diluting effect is felt from the spring “little rain” that fosters strong growth of tender leaves in shrubs, rather than from the “big rain” in late autumn and early winter, which has a more immediate effect on the grasses. 

When new growth supports lots of milk, then that milk will be kebebek. Elders monitor the condition of forage from their manyatta in part through changes in milk texture, as plants adjust to the natural wet and dry cycles of the Northern Kenyan interior climate. 

The first white milk from the cow that follows the manang (colostrum) is kebebek compared with the more keirucha (thick milk) that follows in two to three weeks. Goat milk becomes more kebebek for one or two milkings when, after one week on the lkees (lowland savannah range), the animals are finally taken to water. The diluted milk of unscrupulous market women is kebebek. 

Chai (tea, milk, water, and sugar) that is more dilute (1:4 milk to water) than the standard recipe (1:2) is kebebek. You can tell this by looking, as it is not dark. Ill people may ask for their tea kebebek, as would people who simply prefer it that way. Increased dilution is referenced by two further words: kardadai, which might be as much as 1:5 milk to water, and ulaash, which is so diluted that the underlying ingredient is an “ingredient.” In general terms, ulaash is tasteless.

“Milk is said to be kebebek during the green season, like now. The milk doesn’t have the fat in it. So when there is plenty of milk, they are kebebek. Also, when the calves are young, the milk is kebebek. Cow which has given birth the first time and one that has given birth several times — milk of the multiple-birth cow gets thick faster. In terms of time, it turns from kebebek to keirucha, takes one or two weeks for the first-time mother to one week at most for multiple births mother. Sheep and cow milk is thinner than goat milk. Sheep and cow can be kebebek. Kebebek cow and sheep, only.” — Longhiro Lekudere, Robin Leparsanti in conversation with William Rubel, April 1, 2016.

Return to Milk Taste and Texture terms.

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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