Adjective
Pronunciation: kohng’-oo
Stinky; bad smelling. Negative term. The opposite of koropili (smelling nice). 

Kong’u foods may be unpleasant to consume, but they are still consumable, unlike foods that are so rotten they are keisamis.

Kong’u is used to describe an uncleaned lmala, one that is due for cleaning and thus quickly causes milk to sour and clot. You can see the lmala is due for cleaning because the milk inside is clotting. [Is the following statement correct?] When an nkalani (dirty) woman’s lmala is cleaned and then used, the interior (instead of returning to black) is coated with a white-ish-yellowish film, somewhat analogous to the ring that forms in a bathtub, but likely biologically active. This film gives the milk of the nkalani woman a bad taste.

The lmalasin of most murran (warriors) living on their own in the bush tend to be poorly prepared or haven’t been cleaned properly for a long time, and thus become kong’u. (The murran tend to clean the lmala with cow urine.)

Milk kept in plastic containers quickly becomes kong’u, often in as little as one day. This milk tastes even worse than that from a dirty lmala. 

More generally, kong’u can be used to describe the smell of rotting meat, fruit, or cabbage, and can also be applied to meat from a very old animal that has a strong smell, for example, from an old he-goat. 

Pasteurized milk from shops becomes keisamis (totally inedible), rather than kong’u. 

“When you use the urine to clean the calabash, the milk becomes bad, bitter, like a lemon (kodua). The murran do it in the bush because they don’t have time to clean the calabash, so they’re usually using the cow urine just for the day. But the milk becomes kodua. We use the urine to wash our hands in the manyatta. The calabash is not cleaned with urine in the manyatta, only by the men in the bush.” — Longhiro Lekudere in conversation with William Rubel, January 15, 2025.

Return to Milk Taste and Texture terms.

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

Unknown's avatar

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.

Leave a comment