Decisions regarding livelihoods, land and natural resource management are embedded in the traditional institutions and societal structures of the Maasai communities that have been in dynamic interaction with hegemonic forms of state-building during the colonial and post-colonial periods in Kenya. The Maasai's fraught interaction with and cautious response to change, often portrayed and interpreted as being conservative and repugnant to modernization and/or maendeleo (development), is critical in understanding their response to contemporary mega-development enterprises now mushrooming in the erstwhile marginal frontiers of Kenya.This study examines these larger dynamics in the context of the nexus between development, conservation and community livelihoods in the contested landscape of Olkaria. By locating this study in a historically significant site but also an area of largescale international and state investment in natural resource extraction, I analyze the historical and current threads that intricately but fractiously weave together geothermal development, wildlife conservation, and community well-being as well as claims and struggles of belonging in a contested landscape marked by more than a century of land displacement and land conflicts. Four villages within the greater Olkaria region (Narasha, Olomayiana, RAPland and Mt. Suswa) in Nakuru, Narok and Kajiado counties were purposefully selected for the study. A mixed method approach that entailed ethnographic methods such as focus group discussions, interviews and participant observation were employed to collect data. The data was qualitatively analysed in a thematic scale using enkishon (well-being)-based Maasai philosophy as a frame to deeply understand the extent to which decision making/leadership (erikore), environmental governance (eramatare) and rights-based development (esipata) have been shaped by geothermal development in the area of study.
CHAPTER TWO ENKATINI: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND
CONTINUITIES OF DEVELOPMENT (IN)JUSTICESThe tribe of the Masai (sic), though comparatively insignificant in numbers, yet merit more than passing interest, if only for the obstacles in the past, the difficulties of the present, and the problem of the future which they present to white civilization… (Lord Cranworth 1919:51) 2.1