Samburu woman cooking

A Samburu woman, working at an impromptu
hearth, prepares a goat-meat soup to celebrate
the birth of a child, 2004.

I arrived in the Manyatta near Lkisen the day after a girl was born. The women were preparing a soup that was only for women to drink. It turned out that the custom is that the first stranger to arrive after a baby is born has a role to play in naming the child. So, now, there is girl with my wife’s name, Sonia, living in Lkisen.

The story I want tell with this photograph, and the ones that follow, is the story of impromptu hearths. Two sticks, three rocks, and a pot — that is all one needs to cook a meal — everything else is elaboration. I have eaten meals all over the world cooked on hearths no more complicated than the two you see in these pictures. In fact, one of the most delicately seasoned meals I have ever eaten was cooked on just such a simple hearth by the wife of a fisherman in Zanzibar.

While the hearth of my book, The Magic of Fire, is the European hearth, I spent time in Africa and Asia and also in Eastern Europe with people who still live with live fire. From people who still live with open fire I learned the gestures of living with fire.

If you have never worked with the system of burning just the ends of sticks, you will find it a worthwhile experiment. The system allows for fine control over the heat under the pot.

A Samburu woman simmering soup over an open fire.

The slats form a portable table. She is working with the goat skull.

The Samburu are semi-nomadic pastoralists. They have few material possessions, and those they do have lend themselves to a life in which one travels light. The wooden roll of slats makes a brilliant table — light and utilitarian. Most people only own one knife — and so the knife the woman is using in this picture is likely to be the one she will use for other purposes, as well. The fly whisk is also the stir-stick. It is a mistake to romanticize poverty — the life of the Samburu is a particularly difficult one –But at the same time, there is something to be said for using elemental fire to clarify the thread of our cooking, to lead us backwards towards a simpler approach to the “batterie de cuisine,” and an appreciation of just what is, and is not, central to the art of cookery.

Samburu woman cleaning goat intestines for soup.

The excrement is carefully scraped from the intestines before they are added to the soup. The greens are used to clean the knife.

Removing the brains and sinews after partial roasting of the goat skull.

After the brain is removed the skull is roasted on the interior.

Soup with goat head and intestines cooking in an aluminum pot.

The soup cooked, covered. You see someone holding the lid so I could see it cooking. Wood is being fed into the fire towards the top of the photograph and you can see a little flame at about 3 o’clock. You can see the roasted interior of the skull in the half o the skull that is floating on the surface of the soup. The roasted skull adds flavor to the soup.

The skin of the goat used in the soup is now pegged and drying in the sun under a branch.

And at last, here, you see the skin of the goat pegged on the dirt, drying in the sun. The branch over the skin keeps chickens and children away from it while it dries. We see here a portion of the circle of death and rebirth that we never see. The animal skin will now be used. And while I have no idea for how long anyone will remember that this is the skin of the goat that was slaughtered the day after Sonia was born — it seems clear that beneath the surface all the skins that the Samburu use tell a story.