Adjective
Pronunciation: kehm’-eh-lohk
Positive term meaning sweet; delicious; well done. Only used in the context of the taste and smell of food (but not just milk). See also the related terms kemelok nesiicho and kemelok nodua.

Kemelok is similar to the American English usage for “sweet,” in that the general liking for sweet tastes has extended the term to an abstract sense of good, lovely, etc. Thus, sugar and honey are literally kemelok, but the word can also be used to figuratively praise a tasty piece of meat, especially goat from the lowlands (e.g., the Wamba area), because it is the right climate for these animals, providing ready access to salt licks, salty water, and enough leaves. Many lowland Samburu prefer the taste of their own goats to those of highland animals, preferring the stronger taste of lowland meat, which they refer to as kemelok. 

Milk is kemolok when consumed fresh, just as the foam subsides and it has cooled after milking. In the traditional Samburu milk-consuming context, fresh milk is not the preferred taste, however kemelok it might be, because, among other cultural faults, it is perceived to smell slightly of the cow’s body and of urine. Kemelok milk is also not appreciated because it is keidukulan (tasteless), as it has not had time to develop the more complex flavors that come from fermenting milk in a wooden container cleaned by burning botanicals. As all milk is milked into wooden containers prepared by burning botanicals, even fresh milk has flavor components most non-pastoralists are unfamiliar with. A shift to plastic milking containers changes the experience of kemelok milk to the relatively homogeneous product that most people are familiar with. In its figurative sense of “good,” even milk that has soured can be referred to as kemelok by someone who thinks the milk is particularly wonderful that day. 

See also kemelok nesiicho and kemelok nodua.

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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