"RE " I spend the most of my recent transfer on buying zincs so my wife and i can build our own house. We have planned longtime before to build our own house but there was no money, because presently, we are staying in my parents house which my wife is not comfortable with "."

"For more than 2 years, I have desired to boost my livestock rearing so that it may be a stable source of livelihood for our family. I had only one goat at the beginning. After receiving the recent transfer, I prioritized achieving this ambition by purchasing 5 more goats for $160 in total. At the moment, I am happy owning 6 goats with two being expectant. This is also a future investment that will support me in educating my 2 children. Additionally, I use $150 to support the education of our kids who are in a private primary school. Nowadays, they are learning without frequently missing classes after clearing all their fee arrears and also paying for their next term. With the remaining amount, I started a small grocery business in the village where I am selling vegetables like spinach, tomatoes and cabbages. The income from this activity is helping me in meeting some of the small basic needs of the family."

"I was very happy that morning when I received an sms alert from Give Directly telling me that I have getting money, with this money I'm my family's will now build our personal house in this town, after receiving this transfer my thought was to build I'm my family's a house."

"I have a family of two members and I have been to marriage for only nine months now. I am a housewife and my husband works as a casual worker with an income of $120 per month. We are expecting a baby for three months to come. That income changes depending on how much work he got in a month. As an expectant woman, I need to feed well every day but that is not the case. Two days ago, I had a cup of porridge and spent the whole day without food. I feel dizziness nowadays due to a lack of enough blood. This is caused by a lack of food. This is the challenge I am facing ."

"I have been living a life full of happiness till four years ago when I developed hypertension problems. The problem made me lose consciousness and fall on a burning fire and had bad burnings on my right knee. Since then up to now, I can not walk for long distances alone. Hypertension is also still a challenge to me thus I cannot work anymore. I depend on my son for survival."

"I am currently living alone. My wife lives with our children who lives in the Malindi sub-county. I am a farmer doing crop farming and rearing animals. It has been three years now without rain in our village. This caused drought and famine. I had ten cows and they all died due to a lack of water and grass. It happened last year 2022. I am now having a challenge of getting food. I rely on my children and neighbors for food. Food is the current challenge I am facing."

"Lack of food is our only challenge currently. With the changes in climate these days we are unable to harvest like we used to back in the days. Our food stocks are usually depleted mid year way before we reach the next harvesting season. For instance, this year we only got 3 bags of maize from our one acre farm. We finished this food in July and since then we've had to rely on piece works to find food and it has been exhausting honestly."

"Currently the only thing making my life hard is hunger in my household. I and my family do farm but of late we've been discouraged with the outcomes of our hardwork since we come out empty from our maize field harvests. I attribute this to the fact that we don't apply fertilizer in our fields. We don't apply fertilizer because we are unable to afford the fertilizers due to high prices, thus 60$."

"Hunger and lack of access to piece works make my life harder currently. Fortunately, today I managed to buy 2 buckets of maize for food at 2.7$ each from Phimbi trading centre. With my family size, thus, 5 of us, this will only last a week then will have to go back to seeking piece works which is not an easy endeavour I tell you."