"Financial instability has been the biggest hardship in life. This was necessitated by a lack of better employment opportunities. At the moment, I have 9 children, and we solely depend on my husband who operates a motorcycle taxi. With the huge influx of motorcycles in the market, the business is no longer viable and as a result, we are unable to adequately meet our children's basic needs like health care, better nutrition, and education."

"Due to unpredictable rainfall patterns in this region, we no longer have bumper harvests like we used to long time ago. Our farms are no longer productive and this has resulted to a great challenge food security wise, which is the biggest hardship we face"

"I woke up to a good atmosphere where the whole village was in celebration. I heard familiar voices of my friends saying that GiveDirectly had sent our transfer. I first thought that it was rumors spreading around. I did not waste any minute but grabbed my phone to confirm my curiosity. Indeed I could not believe that I had received my transfer. I was overwhelmed with joy and joined my friends in celebrating."

"The biggest hardship I have faced is raising a family as a single parent.My spouse passed on when we had nothing to support the family.Since then it has been one hurdle after another especially with school fees as well as all the other basic needs"

"I am growing older and older thus engaging in daily chores and causal jobs is becoming challenging. I had built a small house while I was still stronger. By then it was pretty and spacious enough for us but as time went by it turned smaller and older. This made it uncomfortable for us and the leaking roof made it worse to stay in. I had a plan to build a more decent house before, a dream that I never saw it coming through since my daily household needs grew higher forcing me to spend much of my wages on. I totally lost hope of building another one as I got older and accepted to stay in my pitiable conditions. When I received my transfer I felt it had dawned on my life. I no longer worry about a leaking roof. Currently, I live under a decent spacious iron-roofed house courtesy of GiveDirectly. Being able to fulfill this at my age is the biggest difference in my daily life."

"Lack of financial resources to fulfill my desire of providing quality education for children has been my biggest hardship. I am always afraid that I may fail to educate them because they are constantly out of school due to lack of fees."

"Failure to meet my desire of owning a motorbike to assist me in transporting my stock due to lack of adequate finances has been my biggest hardship. This has forced my husband to use an old motorbike which has a mechanical problems and requires constant maintenance which is very costly. I am always worried that it may fail to work and at the same time risking his life."

"Receiving this money means finishing my house to a standard that I desired it to be. As for now, we constructed a permanent house but we could not finish it due to the financial crisis and my plan was to spend the first transfer to do this. On the other hand, I intend to buy a 10,000 liters water storage tank to store water to use during the drought seasons and also to sell to the community in order to earn an extra income."

"With my family of 12 members yet we depend on subsistence farming which is not reliable in our area because of the unpredictable weather conditions, it has been a big challenge to meet our basic needs. This has forced me to engage in labor-intensive activities like burning charcoal in order to supplement the little income from my husband's casual jobs. With our combined income, we still can not fully sustain the needs of our family and therefore, lack of a reliable source of income is the biggest hardship that I have ever faced."

"A decent house and owning livestock is basically what receiving this money means to me. As of today, I live a life of misery since the standard of our livelihood is very low especially our housing and meeting other basic needs like food and school fees has posed a big challenge to us. My intention is to spend the utmost 250 dollars to construct a semi-permanent house for my family because the one we currently have is not worthy of living. My other plan is to buy livestock especially 7 goats at $30 each and 2 indigenous dairy cows at $150 each. This will bring a big change in my life since I am sure of my desired transformed new version of life."