Noun
Pronunciation: XXX
Ceremonial name for a small nklip decorated with skirai (cowry shells) and used by a bride at her wedding. She carries it on her back on the second day of her wedding. After the ceremony, the enkoriong once again becomes an nklip used by girls and women.
The enkoriong is carved of wood. It has a long neck that swells from the top The long urn-shaped lid, also carved from wood, is detachable and serves as a cup.
This bride’s lmala must be naasho (free of blemishes, and without cracks or repairs), marking it as a ritual object. If her mother doesn’t have an existing one that meets the standard for a wedding, then her mother will make a new one or she will purchase one from a specialist.
The enkoriong comes into ritual use on the second day of the wedding, when the bride is already married. She must separate from her mother and go to live with her husband. Depending on family culture, the bride may be ritually dressed in skins by her mother and other female relatives outside the door of her mother’s ngaji (house) within the manyatta compound. The enkoriong is strapped to the bride’s back as the last piece of traditional wedding garb. She may be given a milk-filled lmala nkirau to carry, or she may bear both an enkoriong and an nkirau — one on her back and the other in her arms. Milk plays a central role in this portion of the wedding ceremony.
The bride begins a ritual walk by moving slowly towards the father’s gate — the gap in the acacia thorn fencing that is the entrance to the ngaji (her mother’s house). Her father will have made a line of cut grass on the ground, marking the separation between the manyatta and her unmarried state on the inside, and her husband’s manyatta and her new life-state as a married woman on the outside. Her husband and his best man wait for her just outside the gate.
With the husband leading, followed by the best man carrying a lmala naililiori filled with milk, the three begin a slow procession to her new home and the completion of the marriage ceremony. The three (bride, groom, and best man) stop before ending their slow walk, when they are still very close to the bride’s birth manyatta. They kneel, and the best man, who is carrying a milk-filled small naililiori(one usually used to store sheep fat), pours milk into its cap, and hands that cap to the bride who then feeds him the milk. He replaces the cap, they stand, process a little more, kneel, and then the best man puts milk into the cap and feeds it to the bride, who takes the cup back and replaces the cap. They then continue the procession in silence. The bride is fed in this way three more times. The procession can take a day or two at a ceremonial pace.
After these four feedings are completed, the three stand and proceed on foot or by any conveyance they can afford — motorbike, a mattatu, land cruiser — to the husband’s manyatta. The one separation ceremony I observed took place in 2018, at the marriage of a girl about 12 years old (the age of my daughter, who was with me on the trip). The wedding was bathed in the child’s screams. Customs are changing, so the procession on foot continued only three-quarters of the way around the manyatta, at which point the bride got on a motorbike behind her husband. The best man filmed everything for Facebook.
After the husband’s family makes a ceremonial donation of gifts to the bride, such as bracelets, beads, and animals — each presented with a ceremonial name, thus one doesn’t say, here is a bracelet, one says here is flama, by way of analogy in authorial imagination — the bride distributes the milk from her lmala to the assembled children. Then she goes into her husband’s newly built house, where she is met by her mother-in-law and other new female relatives, and they drink tea.
And so, finally, the young woman, after some small details, becomes married in accordance with ancient Samburu tradition. Until very recently, some brides would never return to visit their mother’s family. (As the Samburu were semi-nomadic, this “return” was not to a specific piece of ground, but rather to the manyatta where the mother’s ngaji was located, wherever that might be.) Even if the woman did return for a visit, it was for a brief meeting and took place 10 to 20 years after the wedding ceremony.
Description
Capacity: about 1/2 liter
Cylindrical wooden vessel with an urn-shaped wooden lid. The container’s long, straight sides swell outward gently below its neck to a swollen rounded base. The bottom is rounded. At its top, the container narrows slightly to a neck topped with holes stitched with colorful threads ending in colorful triangles; the stitching holds in place a leather collar or flange that supports the lid. The lid, which also serves as a cup, fits inside the leather flange. The lid is also cylindrical and roughly urn shaped, a little broader at the bottom than at the top, which is flat. The leather carrying straps are decorated with cowry shells and are about the width of these shells. One strap is attached to the lid. The cowry shells are attached to the long strap in a vertical orientation so the center of the shell is parallel with the side of the strap, while the strap that circles the top of the bottom is oriented perpendicular to the edge of the strap. It is not uncommon for the leather straps to retain some animal hair.
The vessel’s exterior is painted black (animal blood mixed with ash) or stained red with ochre, or both. The lid also can be painted black or ochre-stained, but is otherwise undecorated.
Return to Types of Milk Containers.
This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel.
Samburu Research 