My life is now different because I am now owning a rental house which I had been longing to construct but since I am a widow and the little money I could get from my casual job was not enough. I was responsible for paying school fees for my children and providing their basic needs. I could not imagine I could afford to construct the rental house. In the next four months I am hoping my life will never be the same again. This is because currently, some rooms have tenants and they will be paying their rent at the end of every month. This will be my main source of income and it will boost my living standard. I will be able to pay school fees for my children without any challenges and also cater for their basic needs. I thank God for bringing GiveDirectly in my village and I am grateful to be among the beneficiaries.

In my opinion GiveDirectly has been of great help to all of us in my village. First majority of us are now owning livestock like oxen. With the oxen, we are assured of consuming less time in ploughing our farms and in large scale and due to this we are hoping to get some good harvests. Previously we used to till by ourselves and we could not manage to complete an acre since it was tiresome and because of that we were always getting poor harvests. Some of us are now hiring the oxen to neighbors at a fee which is a source of income to us. Secondly all of us are now owning permanent well plastered iron roofed houses. Previously we used to sleep under muddy grass thatched huts which were always leaking whenever it rained. We are all smiling for now because our poverty life will soon come to an end. To my opinion I have not seen anything GiveDirectly has not done well.

I spent part of my second transfer on purchasing some building materials like, twelve pieces of iron sheets and 1 metal door. This was to complete my rental house which I had started constructing with my first transfer.In the next two moths I am going to achieve my goal of owning the rental house. I also cleared school fees for my two children for the remaining two terms so that they can study without any disturbances. The remaining amount of money I decided to purchase sufficient some food staffs for my family that would take us till the next harvest.

The biggest difference is that I was able to purchase building materials for the completion of our rental house which has been our source of income. I was stuck not knowing where to get the money to complete the house. Through the transfer, I embarked on building and it's now going on well.

I saw the notification early in the morning and I could not hold back the joy in my heart on realizing that I had received the promised transfer from GiveDirectly. I could not believe it for I never imagined that in my life I would get such an amount of money. I was even happier on the thought that the transfer would enable me to continue building my rental house that has been for a long time in a state of incompletion.

We had begun a project of building a rental house in the outskirts of Mombasa city together with my husband on a plot that we acquired through our own savings. We had set up a six-roomed house of which we managed to complete three of the rooms which are already occupied and earning a monthly rental income. However, our plans for completing the remaining rooms came to a stop when my husband passed on. Since then, I have not been able to finish building the other rooms due to inadequate finances. Thus on receiving the first transfer from GiveDirectly, I embarked on the process of bringing my house to completion. I purchased the building materials which included blocks, bags of cement and sand. I also paid for the cost of transport and other expenses. In addition to this, I paid for the masonry and the cost of labour incurred. The transfer has enabled me to at least raise the other rooms though not complete, for the money was not sufficient.