Noun
Pronunciation: XXX
Calabash for milk, meat, or butter. 

Nkodoos, Samburu, Kenya
Nkodoos milk container; note the animal hair on the skin bottom.

The lmala nkodoos is carved out of lokudong’it and no other wood. It has a skin lid that also serves as a cup, and a skin bottom; it shares the latter feature with the seenderi. It is used as a collecting container, both for milking and for bleeding a cow. (Cow blood was mixed with milk in January and February to supplement the diet of children after the long rain ended, and to feed boys whose penis was recovering from being cut in the circumcision ceremony; see kule saroi.)

Description

Capacity: XXX liters

Nkodoos, Samburu, Kenya
Nkodoos, flanked by larger lmalasin in the nklip class.

Cylindrical wooden vessel with a leather base and a cylindrical cup-shaped leather lid. The container’s neck is long, straight and pillar-like, and swell gently in circumference to a slightly wider leather base. The ratio between the base and the neck is roughly 1:1.2. The leather base secured in place with stitching. The container’s exterior is typically painted black (using ash mixed with animal blood). Leather carrying straps of varying widths encircle the vessel’s sides at its waist. The detachable lid is cup-shaped and made of leather. The lid’s flat leather top is nailed to the sides. The lid is also usually painted black. 

Return to Types of Milk Containers.

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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