ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, these new settler farmers, who held legal title to their plots, were forced off their land by Kalenjin ‘warriors’ who sought, along with their Maasai neighbours, to displace Kikuyu, Luo, Abagusii, Abaluhya and Akamba settlers and reclaim their traditional lands. However, the price that has been paid involves more than land. The mothers and children at the Total station have lost their heads of households as well as their elder sons/brothers through these ethnic clashes. Currently, the survivors live behind trading stores in cardboard boxes or
rough shanty dwellings eking out a meager living selling com and other goods. For the ‘com kids’ school is no longer an option as teachers too have fled the area fearing for their security. Many victims remain on Church compounds or live just inside nearby forests. The new settler farmers of the Mau escarpment who had transformed the former White Highlands are on the run. The ethnic variable has reared its ugly head in rural Kenya.
