The past is slipping away. The past is leaving us at break-neck speed. We must all start to work even to save the memories! You who are listening to me, you who are out there in the dark, I pray that this appeal, this appeal that you will hear repeated eleven times and that you will hear every Tuesday, will rattle you, will awaken in you your filial devotion to those ancestors who live in and through us, without our even knowing it! Help us! Help, and I will close with these words, those who are forming the atp Museum, those whose folkloric studies are saving both our country’s and humanity’s crowning glories.

Lucien Febvre. Radio Address, 1938. Translation and citation: (Velay Vallantin 1999: 506; emphasis added)

Samburu Research consists of my field anthropology concerning the Samburu cuisine of smoke cured and fermented milk. In recognition that pastoralism is no longer possible in the now degraded acacia-grassland Savannah, Samburu Research now also consists of four other components.

  1. The Memita Disables Tree Nursery, a pioneering agricultural project in the Samburu Lowlands, the inspired and inspiring Idris Lekure, Director. The Nursery project includes teaching agricultural skills at the demonstration nursery located in central Wamba. This project and now includes two other other agricultural projects that have spun off from the original one and is looking forward to future growth. As the Samburu had never previously grown anything, this is a skills building project that begins at the very beginning! Its longterm aim is to teach village women how to grow a small plot of greens to supplement their family’s diet as their diet rarely includes fruits or vegetables. The focus is village women because only villages and towns have any kind of reliable water supply. Idris lost an arm in a construction project. One of his personal aims, besides growing plants, is to employs and teaches gardening skills to other disabled people in the region and to provide them with a safe and understanding oasis to sit amongst the greenery of his Nursery and be together.
  2. Samburu Research runs Augustine’s School for young children and an associated feeding stations. Augustine’s School is directed by Carol Fabert, a former teacher for students with special needs. The school teaches students between 4 to 12. Classes are conducted in three languages, English, Samburu (Northern Maa), and Swahili. There are four teachers and a cook on the school payroll.
  3. Feeding stations. Through Augustine’s School, Samburu Research daily feeds between 40 and 100 children. In addition to staple starches, the food program includes fruits and vegetables, some grown by the Samburu Research agricultural projects.
  4. Samburu Research is also working with Augustine Leboyaire, head of the blacksmith clan, to document and revitalize traditional blacksmithing. With the collapse of the local ecosystem, the products that had been in demand for even centuries are no longer needed. These include bells to put around the neck of herd animals, spear heads, and traditional knife blades. Augustine is one of the few remaining East African blacksmiths who knows how to make metal from “black sand.” Black sand are sand-sized pieces of iron that I recall sifting out of beach sand with a magnet. Augustine sifts the metal sand out of a river bed and then forges it into the most beautiful steal you have ever seen! Samburu Research is working with Augustine to bring blacksmiths to his compound to study with him, and to share their own blacksmithing skills with him, and the blacksmiths who work with him.

Please get in touch with me with the contact form if you might be interested in staying on, and helping with an experimental agricultural project, to help with Augustine’s School, or, if you are a blacksmith, to stay with Agustine and his blacksmithing family. If you have a more general touristic interest, Samburu Research can facilitate your trip by getting you in touch with a fabulous driver and guide based in Nairobi, and with families who will be able to host you.

My work with the Samburu began in 1994. I had passed through Wamba, Kenya, which is in the Samburu Lowlands, the more arid portion of the Samburu territory. The much higher elevation Highlands are cool and green while the Lowlands are semi-arid desert. Prior to the increasingly severe and frequent droughts of the previous fifty years, it was savannah grassland. I felt and instant attraction to the people and the place so I returned in 1994. I have returned nearly every year since then, sometimes even twice a year. I celebrated my 70th birthday in Wamba at the compound of Augustine Leboyere, the head of the blacksmith clan in his area. Five hundred people attended my celebration. We know from the number of paper plates served, that it was four-hundred adults and one-hundred children.

It is crucially important that those of us who do field anthropology give, as well as take, that we do things that directly help the people we learn from. I began this work inspired by the French anthropologist, Marcel Maget, a colleague of Lucien Fabvre, and part of the school of “scientific” anthropology – which they referred to as folkloric studies. All of my work with the Samburu including notes and other raw data will be posted to a website that I pay for for at least 25 years. English is one of Kenya’s official languages, so all Samburu who have gone to school will have access to the material. I will also find a way to get material into appropriate archives so there will be institutional preservation.

Much of what I have done is to document the Samburu cuisine of smoke cured fermented milk. Unfortunately, the ecosystem that supported the Samburu pastoralist culture has collapsed. There are no more herds of cows in the Samburu Lowlands. And as the land can no longer support goats and sheep, the few flocks that are left are tiny. Like, six or ten animals. Camels are the only practical milk animal at this time. As the French wine culture is based on grapes, so the Samburu milk culture is based on cow milk. Camel milk may taste fabulous — it does — but it is now cow. As the French may appreciate an apple or plum wine, it isn’t really wine, from a French cultural perspective. So, as it has turned out, as I was doing my research, the past slipped away from the Samburu. My as yet unpublished (not quite finished) research into their milk culture is the most thorough examination that was made. My hope is that I did a good enough job to keep their milk tradition alive, even if only for special occasions.

With the collapse of the local ecosystem, as of this writing, 2023, hunger stalks the land. The landscape is no longer populated. The manyatta settlements of small stick and dung houses became stick and metal and cardboard and plastic houses as the cow herds collapsed. Now, there are effectively no manyatta settlements besides a few close to towns, like Wamba.

So, one thing you can do to help the Samburu in general, and the region around Wamba in particular, is to come for a visit. It isn’t easy travel, so this suggestion is for experienced travelers. Field anthropologists interested in working with Lowlands Samburu should also get in touch with me. I can facilitate your entry into this region.