Tag: fermented milk

Noun
Pronunciation: koo-lay nah-wah’-toe
Fermented, ripened milk. Milk for children; westerners might call it yogurt.

Kule naoto is prepared in a lmala nkirau, one of the larger fermentation containers. The kule naoto preparation is appropriate for cow, goat, and sheep milk, but not for camel milk. Around Wamba (elevation 1,300 meters), milk takes two to three days to reach the naoto stage, when it is fully soured. The solids form a soft clump at the bottom of the nkirau, while the whey rises to the top. The sour whey can be served to children to stimulate their appetites, or thrown away. Many children enjoy sour tastes (oxalis flower stems being a favorite of children in my California neighborhood), so they can be made happy with this drink. Adults may be less enthusiastic. 

After the sour whey has been removed from the nkirau, the lid is replaced and the fermentation container is shaken. This can be done by holding the nkirau and shaking sharply. People have different styles. My friends hold it at a 45-degree angle in front of their bodies and shake it in a vigorous manner, with as forceful an upward jerk as they can manage. This can take 30 minutes. The nkirau can also be hung from a tree or from the strong center beam holding up the manyatta roof, parallel to the ground, with the nkirau container shaken back and forth. (This is similar to the method for making the yogurt drink known as ayran in Turkey, where in the countryside the fermentation container is often hung from the limb of a tree.) After the solids have been liquified by the shaking, the nkirau is allowed to rest for a few minutes before the whey that has risen to the top is again poured off. 

“Milk is ripened, salty, no longer liquid, slightly sour, but not very sour. The milk is fermented and ready to use: kowoto (adjective). It tastes kemelok, the most preferred stage. Camel milk never becomes naoto; you can’t make butter with it. Goat can be naoto, but you can’t use it to make butter — that only applies to sheep and cow. Two hours after naisukut [in Lengasaka], slower in Wamba. … It might take two days to get to this stage.” – Robin Leparsanti in conversation with William Rubel, Feb. 1, 2016.

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This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

Noun
Pronunciation: XXX
Sour milk. 

As milk continues to ferment in a lmala, it becomes demonstrably sour: kule naisicho. This is the fermentation stage after kule naisukutan (milk with a relatively neutral taste).

People used to drinking commercially processed milk from a container will say, “This milk has gone sour,” but pasteurized milk does not really sour. Instead, it goes bad. Sour milk was an esteemed drink in many parts of Europe prior to the spread of industrial milk. In interpreting the Samburu concept of “sour milk,” one has to remember that this is not milk prepared in sterile metal containers. Besides the sourness, there is a range of taste sensations that local people note, such as the wood used to clean the lmala, the type of animal milk fermented, the length of time the milk is from the start of lactation (which affects mouthfeel and taste), and the seasonality and type of forage the animal has consumed. For most non-Kenyan readers, our language impoverishes the product. 

Because the way the lmala is cleaned affects the milk’s taste, one becomes accustomed to one’s mother’s method. There is no sour milk like the sour milk of one’s mother, unless of course, she is nkalani (slovenly), in which case (like those of us who grew up with mothers who were horrible cooks) one prefers to consume this type of milk at a friend’s house. 

“Moving towards bad but still edible. More separation of liquid and solid. The water is salty. It is shaken to mix again. Lemon taste. Gives you the ‘balloon ear’ feeling. Nowadays some people add sugar to this one to eat on its own, or eat with ugali. Although you can use it as milk, you are more likely to leave it to become kule nataroitie. Happens about two days after kule naoto.” — Robin Leparsanti in conversation with William Rubel, Feb. 1, 2016.

Return to the Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

Noun
Pronunciation: XXX
This is the fourth broad stage in the fermentation process (the first stage being milk fresh and warm from the animal), when the taste of milk shifts from nairobi (sweet) toward sour. 

Taste is how the Samburu monitor the state of the milk in the lmala. While kule naisukutan does not yet taste fully sour, it will immediately curdle and sour when boiled. Because it curdles in hot water, it is no longer good for tea. It is no longer pleasurable to drink, because it doesn’t have the sweetness of kule nairewa or the sourness of kule naoto — it is just in-between, neutral, like a slack tide — but it is good for porridge made with ugali. When kule naisukutan is poured into the boiling porridge, the curds become stringy. The porridge is now keisiicho (sour). 

If you have no alternative and must use kule naisukutan for tea, you add sugar to the milk and add this mixture to the boiled tea once it is off the fire, with a pinch of natron added — the salt stops it from becoming stringy. 

Kule naisukutan from cow milk behaves differently at this stage than sheep and camel milk, which can still be used for tea. 

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This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

Noun
Pronunciation: XXX
Literally, “cold milk.” Milk that is no longer warm from the cow and is beginning to undergo fermentation in the lmala.

When kule nairewa (milk fresh from the animal and thus warm) cools, it becomes kule nairobi. 

Kule nairobi is used after it begins to ferment in the lmala, a period of hours that varies by seasonal temperature and geography. In Wamba, Kenya, it generally takes three to four hours after milking to reach the kule nairobi stage. Depending on the weather, and in a freshly smoked lmala, it would take less time in a warmer climate at a lower elevation from Wamba, like that of Archers Post (just one day), and more time in higher elevations, such as Marsabit and Maralal (four to five days).   

You can make tea with kule nairobi until it shifts to a later stage of fermentation, kule naisukutan. 

“It does not make the tea taste sour. It is still nairewa (fresh) and supati (good).” — Robin Leparsanti in conversation with William Rubel, Feb. 1, 2016.

Return to the Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

Noun
Pronunciation: XXX. 
Newly collected milk warm from the animal and somewhat sweet. Most Samburu people do not drink kule nairewa because it is kong’u (smells of cow) and has not yet acquired the desirable flavors from fermentation in a lmala.

Kule nairewa, as with all Samburu milk, is consumed either from a small lmala into which the animal is milked, or from a container into which the milk was transferred. 

Murran (warriors) drink kule nairewa while out with the animals when they are too far from a manyatta to get fermented milk from a home. Otherwise, fresh milk is only consumed by elders — all of whom are by definition men. From the fresh milk, elders can tell a great deal about the herd and the state of the forage. Through the subtleties of mouthfeel, they can taste how far the animals are from the start of lactation, and from taste and aroma they can tell what plant or plants the animals have been eating.  

To Samburu people, the dominant smell and taste of kule nairewa is of the sweat or basic smell of the animal — thus, the smell of cow, goat, sheep, or camel. While fresh milk can be used to make chai (tea boiled with milk and sugar), when milk was plentiful, most tea was made with kule nairobi, a stage in which milk has absorbed taste and aroma from the lmala but has not yet soured enough to curdle when mixed into a hot liquid, as it will at the next stage, kule naisukutan. 

“Straight from the cow, it can give you an upset stomach. You need two or three hours to cool.” — Robin Leparsanti, in conversation with William Rubel, Feb. 1, 2016.

Return to the Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

Noun 
Pronunciation: kah-mah-nang 
True buttermilk; uncultured buttermilk. Kamanang’ is the whey that is produced after churning cream or, in this case, the curds.

The Samburu consume kamanang’ fresh, fermented, or lightly boiled. If consumed fresh, kamanang’ is in the same class as kule nairewa. Depending on how the lmala has been prepared, the fresh milk may or may not have picked up flavor from the burning sticks used to sterilize the container. When fermented, kamanang’ can be kept in the lmala for roughly one week, until the white milk comes [What is “white milk”? Leave your answer in the Comments below]. 

Return to Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

Adjective 
Pronunciation: XXX 
Ripened milk that has fermented and is ready to drink.

Kowoto describes milk at the point it has soured; is no longer liquid; and has formed a soft, supple product similar to yogurt but more delicate. This is the most esteemed stage for fermented milk, the point at which the milk is most balanced. The term is applied to all animal milk except for camel.

See also kule naoto.

If I ask you, ‘How is the milk?’ and it is kule naoto, then I will reply ‘Kowoto’.” — Robin Leparsanti in discussion with William Rubel, Feb 1, 2016.

Return to Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

Noun
Pronunciation: koo’-lay
General term for milk. It can be cow, sheep, goat, or camel, and there is no assumption that kule refers to one type of milk over another.

This Samburu word will trip up outsiders, whose understanding of milk is limited to liquid that has been transferred fresh and unfermented from the dairy herd to a processing plant, and then homogenized and pasteurized for storage in waxed cardboard boxes, glass bottles, or plastic pouches. The processing plant will also adjust the milk fat so that a standard amount ends up in the finished product — whether “whole milk” or “skimmed milk” in American English. Milks that are “ultrapasteurized” tend to have a slightly different taste, and even texture, than less radically treated milk products. Dairy products tend to be derived from pasteurized milk. So, butter, cheese, kefir, and yogurt are all children of milk that basically went from dairy to industrial processing equipment that transformed the raw milk to cooked milk, and then on to an industrial system that distributed that product in different ways to different manufacturers. 

The kule of the Samburu — and this also applies to all remaining Kenyan pastoralists, not just Samburu people — is a milk that went from dairy herd to lmalasin (wooden or gourd containers for milk fermentation) that had been made clean enough to handle milk by being heated and steamed with burning sticks and water. The latter would have been selected by the woman of the house, as all production is house-based and conducted by females for keeping qualities and flavor profile. 

For all practical purposes (exceptions being exceptions), the Samburu do not drink milk directly from their animals. Thus, all Samburu milk products are fermented to one degree or another. Even kule nairobi — milk that has been in the container just long enough to become nairobi (cold), though not yet noticeably fermented — will have picked up taste and aroma from the lmala in which the milk was stored. How much taste and flavor is picked up depends on the botanicals that were used to clean the container and the woman’s lmala cleaning style. While I did not personally taste the lmala the last time I drank what was without question one of the most delicious cups of milk I have ever tasted — a cup of kule nairobi camel milk — I suspect a more sophisticated palate would have. What I tasted was a notable depth of flavor. Many Samburu can identify the time from initial lactation, the season, and the animal’s pasture from the taste and aroma of the milk.

The cheeses, butters, and yogurts are now a thing of the past in my research area — the Samburu Lowlands, centered on Wamba. This said, in trying to imagine the milks and milk products described in this vocabulary, you need to substitute phrasing like “smoke-cured and fermented milk” for “milk.” 

My own Samburu milk journey began through a glass that I drank in the lightless interior of a manyatta hut on the full moon night of my return to Samburu in 1992. I had read an anthropologist’s report about the Samburu. The anthropologist said that milk was the staple food of the Samburu. What I tasted that first night in the cup of milk passed amongst us was a beverage so deep, complex, and enticing — sweet, with a slight vanilla ice-cream flavor and an ineffable smoky taste — that I was shocked. This was not “milk” in any sense of how I understood the word. I immediately wondered how this had been created, and the next morning began my quest to find out. 

A language analogy would be a claim published in a peer-reviewed paper that the primary French adult beverage is grape juice — but fermented grape juice is not grape juice, and fermented milk is not milk. In English, fermented milk is kefir, yogurt, butter, or cheese. In Samburu, it is kule nairewa, kule naoto, kule naisicho, kule nataroitie, and so on. 

Return to Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel.