The fermentation process begins with the lmala container being cleaned with burning botanicals. Kule (milk) is added to the container and then the milk goes through stages of fermentation; if left too long, it goes bad. The Samburu people of northern Kenya have traditionally fermented milk from their animal herds in containers made of wood or gourd, known as lmala (singular) and lmalasin (plural).
The stages of milk fermentation, from fresh to rotten, proceed in the following order:
Kule nairewa – fresh and warm from the animal
Kule nairobi – cooled and beginning to ferment
Kule naoto (alternatively, kule kowoto) – ripened and ready to drink milk
Kule naisukutan – flavor shifts from sweet to sour
Kule naishicho – sour milk
Kule nataroitie – milk that has gone bad but didn’t fully sour
Kule ntorok – rotten milk
Explore Samburu words about milk fermentation
Each link below will take you to an in-depth description of the term, including a pronunciation guide, and how the word relates to milk fermentation.
I encourage you to begin with kule to gain a basic understanding of the importance of fermented milk in Samburu culture.
One gourd lama, others made of wood. The lid on this wooden lmala is very thin. On its own, an elegant piece of carving. The cap is used as a cup.Lmala in process by a woman who specializes in wood carving. The black interior is left by burning embers which, slowly slowly eat away at the wood facilitating fine carving.
We see here one gourd container in the upper left image, but all the others are made of wood. I took the photos of unfinished lmala in 2018 as I was walking around the manyatta in the West Gate Conservancy, where I was staying. The inside is carved out by softening the wood by burning with embers and then scraping the ash with a shallow spoon-shaped carving tool forged by a local blacksmith. Very thin walls and elegant containers are crafted using this carving system.
Words preserve culture. Over a period of fifteen years, with the help of dozens of friends in the Samburu Lowlands near Wamba, Kenya, I have created a culinary dictionary with as fine a level of cultural detail as I was able to achieve. The level of cultural detail I have been able to achieve is unusual in dictionaries. In this instance, I think that I am able to show that within subsistence cuisines in which the diet consists of a handful of ingredients, or only one, that there is much more than meets the eye of the outside viewer. Through this dictionary project, I have done my best to preserve for the Samburu themselves cultural knowledge that is rapidly being lost. I am also offering outsiders a glimpse into what was an exceedingly subtle cuisine centered on what I refer to as smoke cured fermented milk. This is milk fermented in wooden containers sterilized by burning sticks. The tradition of smoke cured fermented milk is not unique to the Samburu — it is a practice shared by many pastoralist traditions within other Kenyan tribal group, even amongst the Kikuyu. The Samburu, however, are amongst the last East African groups who were able to maintain their traditional milk cuisine in its full complexity until relatively recently.
I began working on the Samburu milk cuisine in 1994. It was a vastly richer practice then, than it is now, although even then it will have been diminished by the first of the devastating droughts that began in the early 1970s.
I do not speak Maa. This dictionary was written with the help of Samburu who speak both Maa and English. Every entry has been read by many people. I kept what seemed to have a consensus behind it.
The local Savannah acacia-grassland ecosystem has collapsed. The land no longer even supports goats. With the collapse of the ecosystem that supported pastoralism, Samburu Lowlands pastoralists can no longer live on the land. The entire world of smoke-cured fermented milk, historically the single most important Samburu cultural food, is passing into memory. Young people have little to no experience with smoke cured milks. It has been years since there were cows in the Lowlands. It has been hard to ccess to daily supplies of cow milk, the Samburu milk of choice.
The anthropological literature concerning the Samburu tends to report that “milk” is their staple food (or was), at which point the literature tends to move on to something else. In this, the anthropological literature tends to let us all down – the Samburu and outsiders alike.
To say that “milk” is the staple food of the Samburu is like saying that grape juice is the primary alcoholic drink of the French. Milk is the ingredient in Samburu smoke-cured fermented milk, exactly as grape juice is the ingredient in French wines. The depth and complexity of the Samburu culinary vocabulary is astounding. I suspect that other cultures with beverages at the core of their diet will also have a complex culinary vocabulary.
The Samburu milk tradition is centered on fermentation. Milk from cow, goat, sheep, or camel, are milked into fire-cleaned and smoked hand carved vessels, lmala. Everything about the experience of consuming a milk-based fermented beverage is encoded within their language.
Smoke cured fermented milk is alive, as are all actively fermenting foods. The taste and texture of the milks being fermented change as fermentation progresses, shifting from sweet to neutral to sour. At the same time, the milk’s texture thickens. To a Samburu there are many more aspects of taste and texture beyond the stages of fermentation. I have tried to record the Samburu vocabulary that is used to talk about food — one of us human’s favorite pastimes.
Because milk, a beverage, was the Samburu staple, they have an exceedingly detailed and subtle culinary vocabulary. There are words for taste and texture concepts that we do not have in English. As of 2023, the dictionary of culinary terms, along with related vocabularies, is in a final draft form. I have other projects in front of this, so I will probably not complete the manuscript for publication before 2025.
Here is a sample entry:
Kebebek [adj]. Used to describe a thin mouthfeel or to milk diluted with water. The oppostie of keirucha. By nature, this is a relative term. Comparing milk textures, camel is the most kebekek followed by cow, sheep, and goat. Milk texture changes seasonally. For example, cow milk, always less kebekek than camel milk, is seasonally perceived as kebekek when rainy season fodder naturally dilutes its texture. The strongest diluting effect is felt from the Spring “little rain” that fosters strong growth of tender leaves in shrubs, rather than from the “big rain” in late autum and early winter which has a more immediate effect on the grasses. When new growth supports lots of milk, then that milk will be kebebek. Elders monitor the condition of forage from their manyatta homes in part through changes in milk texture as plants adjust to the natural wet and dry cycles of the Northern Kenyan interior climate. The first milk from the cow is kebebek compared with the more keirucha, thick milk, that follows in two to three weeks. Goat milk is made more kebebek for one or two milkings when, after one week on the lkees, range, they are finally taken to water. The diluted milk of unscrupulous market women is kebebek. Chai (tea, milk, water, and sugar) that is more dilute (1:4 milk to water) than the standard recipe (1:2) is kebekek. Ill people may ask for their tea kebekek; as may people who simply prefer it that way.
Samburu Research 