hence they left and returned unmarried. This did not disrupt ordinary patterns since it was more usual than unusual for young men to wait a few years before marriage. This time was spent searching for bride wealth, and serving in the war may be said to have served this purpose. Later interviews with veterans indicate that they were warmly welcomed back by parents and contemporaries. Neither did they bear resentment to their age-mates who had avoided the hardships of military service, some of who had married and acquired cattle in the intervening period. In fact, the veterans note that they expressed gratitude to them for looking after their cattle and other property as they had been slogging around Tanganyika and Mozambique. Economically, it is noted that the veterans did not receive pensions as they had expected but that they did return with their back-pay which for some amounted to as much as several hundred shillings, quite a significant sum at the time. It is noted that almost all of the returning veterans used their back pay to purchase cattle, some of which along with cash was used as bride wealth. There were instances of land purchase on the fringes of the reserve but these were minimal. Much as the Government had alienated part of the Nandi Reserve the population pressure was not yet great enough to leave most men dissatisfied with the amount of land they would acquire by traditional means. It has been observed that where purchases were made it was done less with entrepreneurial motive than as a desire to increase one's pasture land. There were also minimal changes to the employment patterns. Few Nandi previously found the prospect of paid employment sufficiently alluring to leave in search of jobs. For instance in 1914 only 100 out of a population of about 45,000 was employed outside the District. The numbers did rise to 352 for 1915/6 and 612 in 1916/7, largely in response to the wartime needs of the Protectorate but by 1919 they had fallen back to 185. While military service continued to appeal to the young men, civilian service did not. The District Commissioner was hard put in 1922 for instance to produce 200 able-bodied young men to work on a local road-building project. He would resort to conscripting them under the 'Native Authority Ordinance', the infamous labor circular written in 1919 by then B.E.A Governor