As soon as I had sipped my first sip of smoke cured and fermented milk prepared by the mother of my then friend, Lawrence Letua, I was hooked. It was my first night of my first return to Wamba, Kenya. 1994. I had disembarked from the roof of Baby’s Coach, the one vehicle that connected Wamba with the rest of Kenya via Isiolo and Archer’s post. With the Mathews Range to our right, for hours we bumped and crawled along the road, finally reaching Wamba in flurry of air horn music as the sun was setting in early evening. Every night being and early night so close to the equator. In the dark, there was no electricity in Wamba, and at that time flashlights were not common. There was a moon. We walked in the moon light to his mother’s stick and dung hut. I was ushered through the narrow low door, narrow so one had to bend and slide through at an angle, and was told where to sit in the pitch black interior. No lights of any kind. The hut a few meters in diameter and low. Only children can stand. I was not able to see the other people. Dark skinned people sitting it the dark. We made our introductions and then a hand handed me a wooden cup of milk. I sipped. And that was it. That was love at first sip. Such a delicious lightly smoked ineffably sweet taste, something like vanilla ice cream and a mouth feel that was not that of fresh milk, not a fully clabbered yoghurt, not the thickness of a cultured Kiefer, a mouthfeel that few of us have ever encountered, a milk with body, light, refreshing, with an utterly beguiling taste. 

I returned to Wamba nearly every year between 1994 and Covid, sometimes skipping a year, sometimes going twice. Since Covid, I have been back once, for my 70th birthday. I went back to finish this manuscript and to celebrate my birthday within the community I had developed a deep connection. I had five-hundred guests — one hundred of which were children — including a row of dignitaries — the wives of regional politicians who sat in seats in front of where everyone else was gathered, staring straight ahead, like people at a high table, which is what, in fact, they were. Around a dozen men and women came together in that summer of 2022 to help me complete the dictionary, the identification of the botanicals used in the processing of milk, and the containers into which milk was milked and/or fermented. This work can be understood as a community effort – the Samburu community working with me to document the pride of their culinary culture — a central aspect in how Samburu identified themselves. 

Times have changed. In the past, the field anthropologist would travel to a place, come back to their home, write it up, publish, and that was that. The many people who helped me with this project now all have phones. Several of them are people with whom I have maintained a relationship. There are also now large online communities of Samburu. We are posting this material towards the end of 2024. Throughout 2025 we will be working with people still living in Samburu County and living in the Samburu diaspora in other parts of Kenya, and the world, to correct errors and add details. The life that this work describes is no more. Between climate change and over grazing, the land no longer supports large herds, or even any herds of cows, and for so many right now, not even goats or sheep. Only camels. The countryside is depopulated. Manyattas, small collections of stick and dung huts are a rarity, now mostly associated with the outskirts of a small town, a school. It has been a long time since people have had the daily experience of drinking well prepared cows milk. Or even the experience of a single cup of milk in a year. Memories are fading. 

If you are Samburu and have anything to add to this work, or have corrections you’d like to make, please use the comments. If you’d like to speak with me, then let me know in your comment. The smoke cured and fermented milk cuisine of the Samburu is one of the world’s great milk cuisines. Together we can document it as it was, and then it will at least have a chance to find a new expression as the Samburu melt into the larger culture of Kenya, and the world.

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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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