Before its first use, the interior of a lmala (milk container) is prepared with a burning stick taken from a tree or shrub to impart a specific flavor to the milk stored within. The Samburu have a general word encompassing the botanicals used in this way: lorien. Tradition dictates that containers should be sterilized with botanicals after each use. The wood of some botanicals is also used to make the lmalasin.

For more information on the sterilization process itself, see the Introduction, and watch a short video filmed by my daughter at a Samburu manyatta.

Explore Botanicals Used to Sterilize or to Make Lmalasin

Each link below will take you to photos and descriptions of the common botanicals used in the context of the Samburu milk culture, either as a wood burned as part of the process of preparing the lmalasin interior for milking, or as woods use to make the lmalasin containers themselves.  

More

Use the following links to explore additional content collected through the Samburu Milk Project.

Introduction to the Samburu Milk Project
Dictionary Methodology and Acknowledgements
Stages of Milk Fermentation
Milk Taste and Texture Terms
Types of Milk Containers (Lmalasin)
The Culture of Milk — Idioms and Expressions
Other Samburu Words
Milk, Music and Religion — scheduled completion in late 2025
Milking Songs — scheduled completion in late 2025

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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