New Homes, New Challenges: The Experience of Resettled Maasai Pastoralists of RAPland Village, Olkaria Kenya

Abstract

Grand development projects sometimes result in the forced relocation of people. The relocation is usually stressful in terms of marginalization and social disarticulation, and more so for pastoral communities. The RAPland village at Olkaria, Kenya, was created to accommodate 155 households that were displaced by the development of a geothermal electricity generation plant. The study aimed to explain how relocation constrained resources for extensive pastoralism and how pastoralists cope through adaptation of old pastoralists' knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions and the creation of new strategies for resilient livelihoods using the case of the RAPland Community. Household surveys, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and field observation were used to gather required information. It documented information on land, pasture, and water availability and access. It also assessed livestock production challenges before and after the resettlement and adopted coping strategies. Statistical package for social scientists (version 21) software was used in analysing the data after the screening and cleaning were done using Microsoft Excel (2019). There was a general perception that pastures and water availability were significantly (P<0.05) affected by the relocation. Besides, herders and their herds travelled longer distances, from a mean of 3.2 ±0.29 to 8.1 ±0.41 kilometres to access pastures. Before the relocation, the highest-ranking constraints were drought, livestock diseases, pasture inadequacy, and wildlife predation. After the relocation, access to water, poor pastures, grazing terrain (gulleys), wildlife predation, drought, and livestock diseases became the significant constraints affecting livestock productivity. In conclusion, the reduction in pastures and water access affected livestock productivity in spite of attempts at coping with encountered livestock challenges, the community's dependence on pastoral livestock is threatened, thus, their food and