In Smoke and Shadow : Traditional foods of the Samburu
It is beautiful country. But, like so much beautiful country, there is not enough water to make living easy. The Samburu are nomadic pastoralists, and even as this century begins, the vast majority of Samburu are still living their lives more or less as they have lived them for centuries. They are, however, increasingly touched, directly and indirectly, by those of us who can now so easily reach them, whether from distant continents or from nearby cities. In the end, it doesn’t matter where we come from, California or Nanuki, for we all see and touch with the same hands, the hands of the settled.
As of this writing, September, 2001, a severe drought persists. The bones of dead cows are a common site throughout the countryside. It seemed as if most of the people I met had lost 70% to 80% of their cows. There were few if any baby cows last year and so the cows are giving no milk. Huge transport trucks with more tires and heavier truck springs than one has ever seen, brings yellow corn from Kansas over the rough dirt road that leads into Samburu country. The United States also gives dried beans or peas to mix with the corn to create a more nutritious meal. Judging by the writing on the oil containers, it comes from either the US or Germany. What this means, though, in a deep sense, is that the life of the Samburu has ended. They no longer live independent self-contained lives, indeed, these people who don’t farm are living on food produced by farmers. When the drought ends the food aid will end and the people in the bush will go back to living off their cattle, but the repeated intervention of the world community to feed the Samburu in times of distress clearly marks the end of independence and cultural autonomy for one of the world’s last nomads.
Since I last spent time with the Samburu in 1995, they have begun to acquire automatic assault rifles, castoff AK47’s from more affluent groups like the Somalies and Ethiopians. Even an old AK47 with one clip purchased with two bulls introduces a level of force that is qualitatively different from that of the spear, the club, and the short sword. Deadly raids and counter-raids between tribes in the area form the backdrop of the local scene. The woman whose picture is on this page escaped a Turkana raid in the night losing everything except her life as her hut was burned with all her possessions.
It remains possible, at this moment of finality, to get a glimpse of what was. The purpose of the book I am writing is to work with my Samburu friends to record the flavors and tonalities of one of the last nomadic cultures — to do this for them, for their future, and for us, so that we may know flavors that we have lost from the ages of our ancestors.
The flavors of the evening of the Samburu’s sunset are beginning to be mixed with some of our own—corn, beans, corn meal, sugar, tea and alcoholic drinks fermented from corn and millet. Their cuisine is no longer just blood, milk, meat, fermented honey, and wild foods. But these ingredients remain the spiritual core of the diet, and that is the diet I am writing about.
It is my first night. By the moon Lawrence, my guide, and I have walked to the hut of a friend’s mother. We sit on a cow hide. No light. There are several of us. A fire smolders. There are no windows and there is no smoke hole. The mother of Lawrence’s friend hands me a calabash of milk. I drink and pass it on. It is a milk of smoke, an ineffable breath, the first cup in a circle of deepest shadow.
Lawrence says that the Samburu are like the Jews; this, he says, is a land of milk and honey. Milk is offered wherever you go. Milk of varied textures and infinite flavors. Like the cheeses of France, or, perhaps even more analogous, the pickles of Korea, every household produces milk of different flavors, from the subtle to the pungent. Whether fresh, lightly fermented, or a full-fledged yogurt — whether cow, goat, camel or a mixture — the milk of the Samburu is always a milk touched by smoke, always a taste of the untasteable.
I close this page with a song by Augustine. 
Augustine lives a couple kilometers from Maralal in the hills to the East of the town. He is a retired school teacher and lives in a two room house – two tiny rooms of a house made of mud and branches of the blue gum tree. He had sold his guitar, so I paid to buy the materials to build a new one. It is is this new guitar that he is playing here. I made the recording in what he calls his living room. The living room has mud walls, a mud floor, three rocks for the fire, a cooking pot, a broken chair, one pair of shoes, and some clothing hanging from a line. The second room of his house is the bedroom. The only furniture is the bed – two empty white plastic sacks that the US corn comes in. The living room is a bit of mess. This room is spartan. The bed-sacks lie flat and smooth, perpendicular to one of the walls.
Note: Augustine died a few years ago.