When GiveDirectly officers came to enroll me, they found my three rooms house which I was building to replace the single room that I live in half way. The single room which we are currently living with my six children is in a bad shape with holes around everywhere and a rotten grass roof. I told them that this was a very good opportunity for me to complete my house to escape the danger of being buried inside incase of heavy rainfall. Ever since I started receiving the transfers, I have been spending half of it towards completion of my house and the other half to pay school fees for my children since they are all school going. This has made me survive tough economic situation as I was making local beer out of coconut trees to earn living and most of the trees have dried up due to severe drought. As I made it my norm, I spend three of my recent transfer in building my house and paying school fees.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does well in terms of their selection criteria. I can clearly say that I am beneficiary in the program due to no cases of biasness from the recruiting staff in GiveDirectly. I have in the past been discriminated when we receive aid from other organizations but with GiveDirectly everybody has a fair opportunity to be selected.

I have been living in a house that is almost falling down due to its weak poles and leaking roof. I have always wanted to build another strong and better house for me and my family. My economic situation has not allowed me to do so since I earn very little from the business I do which is selling of palm wine. When I received the first transfer of KSH 1200 I spent it all in buying stronger poles that will be used in building the new house. I also spent KSH 500 to buy some additional building poles when I received my second transfer. I bought for my four kids some new pair of shorts since the ones they had were already worn out. The shorts costed KSH 1000. I paid KSH 500 to the school to clear some school fees arrears. The remaining KSH 1000 was spent in buying food for my family during the festive season.

The message came in the morning but that day I was very occupied I barely noticed until my children came from school for lunch and informed that they had heard around that some people had received the transfers. After checking I had actually received the money but I was surprised because the entire time I thought the whole thing was a hoax.

I would honestly say this money helped me continue with finishing of my house because like I mentioned I started building five years ago but until now I have yet to finish but with these funds I am sure eventually I will.

After moving away from the family compound five years ago I started building my house but I have not finished to date because I kept running out of money from time to time. So after I received the money I went ahead and bought twenty pieces of timber that would help with roofing where one piece was KES 50 so in total it cost me KES 1,000. As for the rest of the money I decide to buy laundry detergent which was KES 150.