"It is now four years without rain in our village. This has caused drought and famine. It takes me 2 hours to walk from home to Jila water pan. It is approximately 10km. Before the drought, I used to get water from the nearest water pan and it just took 10 minutes to and from the water pan. Lack of fresh water is the current challenge I am facing in life."

"Lack of a stable source of income is a great challenge. My husband and I rely on casual jobs to make ends meet and provide for our family of five. Most days can go by without earning a shilling forcing us to sell household items to buy food. It is very strenuous and stressful especially when I think of my children lacking school fees next year if I do not get a good job."

"I am a widow, lost my husband in 2014. It's really difficult raising children alone. The drought has been hard hitting. I mainly depend on casual jobs such harvesting tomatoes. In a day, I get paid $3. This is little for my family. It cannot buy enough food for us. Due to the drought there's limited jobs. If one's lucky you get 2 in a week. Lack of casual jobs affects my ability to feed my family. It's really hard getting a meal daily. Some days we don't eat. Just drink some hot water mixed with sugar."

"The major economic activity on which I have depended for many years is charcoal work, a very strenuous job. This work is recently not reliable because trees are scarce and making 1 sack takes me a week to make $4. This has forced my household to live a very miserable life because of the financial crisis, hence, meeting our basic needs has become so difficult. Therefore, I consider financial constraints to be my biggest challenge."

"I am involved in a small business within my compound, I own a shop where I sell household goods to make a living out of it. My business at the moment has hit headwinds, it is doing badly because the cost of living has gone up, and people do not have enough disposable income. Subsequently, this has affected my business too since I depend on them to buy from me. I used to make sales of up to $15 a day but of late I operate on a turnover of $5 per day. This has affected us from meeting our demands, and as a result, we struggle to raise school fees for our child who is in Emmaland primary school. I am afraid that if the situation persists we may not be able to cater to her school fees and other family needs."

"Life is hard and has so many struggles. We are faced with a myriad of unsurmountable challenges. Day after day we live from hand to mouth. I am a casual laborer who tends on other people's farms for a meager wage while my husband does motorcycle business for someone who pays him at an agreed price of $4.50 per day, then any other amount above that is his take-home. It is a very ambitious target and sometimes he cannot meet and that means he has to come home empty-handed after laboring out there. It is such a bad state of things. Food insecurity is what has pushed us to untold suffering. We have a small piece of land that can hardly sustain any meaningful agricultural produce and as such we have to purchase maize at the nearby Kapkwen market. The cost of the commodity has gone up as a result of the increased cost of living. A 2 kg packet of maize goes at $1.70 which is high for the people of little means like us. Sometimes we go to bed hungry when we are not able to afford it, at such circumstances my children bear the brunt of it all and it worries us a lot."

"The most chlenging thing that we are currently facing is shortage of water. In the recent past we have been getting enough supply of water from a water pan near us. With time, this pan has been strained by the rapidly growing population in my village and prolonged dry seasons. The water that we get from the pan is nowadays very dirty and has a high likelihood of being contaminated. We as a family have even worked hard and bought a 5000 litres capacity water tank but we do not have water in it due to the prolonged periods of going without rain. We can only hope that the government will come in and address the situation at hand by providing us with piped water."

"Drought is the main challenge I'm facing. It has been many years since we have had strong rains and this has greatly affected us. I have to walk for long distances in search of water which is very hard. In addition to this, I'm faced with hunger since our farms and animals are not as productive as they usually are when we have good rains. My children have to stay without food or go with two meals in a day which is not enough for the family."

"The challenge I'm faced with at the moment is my house. The house is small and is cold. I live in the house with my daughter and grandchild and I find it so congested for the three of us. Due to a lack of money and my old age I'm unable to build myself a more dissent house and also provide food for my family. Since I depend on charcoal burning to make ends meet I feel tired and unable to do heavy work which means we have to go without food."

"The main challenge that we are faced with at the moment is a drought. It has been three years since it rained and this has led to our rivers drying up and farms not being productive. We don't have enough food for three full meals and we sometimes have to take only two meals. This is hard for me since my children are young and it's difficult seeing them go without food. In addition to this, joblessness is the other challenge. I depend on charcoal burning for money and since the government banned its sale, I don't have anything to do, I depend on my husband who works as a bodaboda driver (motorbike business). Life is very difficult for us here."