Ploughing my farm and planting Napier grass is my new goal. I had never thought of doing so. When I bought a dairy cow I found it worth to invest on it. Currently I have enough to feed the cow. I am so grateful for the support because GiveDirectly has changed my living standard.

During the registration process it was done fairly without discrimination. We received the total amount that we were promised. I do not find anything that GiveDirectly did not do well.

I spent KES 37,000 to purchase a dairy cow. This was one of my main focus. I used to buy milk daily and this was so costly for me since I do not have a continuous source of income. I depend on small scale farming and causal jobs in the village. The amount of money that I get through this is so small and it was only for household basic needs. Currently I have a dairy cow and I no longer stress up on where to get the money to buy milk. I used part of the money to plough my farm and planted Napier grass for feeding my dairy cow. I have devoted much of my time on this dairy project. The rest of the money I bought food and clothes for my children. We are living happily and I hope to improve this breed of cow to a better one in the future.

On confirming the message I had received that morning from GiveDirectly, I was so excited that it was bearing the good news and a confirmation of what I had been hearing from other villages. I was still at home with my wife then as it was a quarter past nine in the morning. On showing her that message, she was overjoyed to a point of getting emotional. This was such a timely blessing to my household as we had been having a lot of plans that only insufficient financing could not allow us to execute.

With the expanded business that I am currently running, I had been able to realize quite a larger profit margin compared to the previous months due to the diversified products I am currently trading with. Initially, I was strictly buying and selling chicken but after adding up the capital, I was able to also introduce egg selling into my business. The two work well as I had been collecting eggs from every household with chicken around that in most cases gives me access to the new chicken buying points. This to me has been the biggest difference in my daily life since I received the transfer. I am glad that my family is now assured of the daily bread out of this growing business.

I was glad after receiving the first transfer as I had quite a lot of plans lined up awaiting any incoming money. With my family of four, we had been fully dependent on the small chicken selling business that that was not consistent providing for us as the income kept fluctuating with seasons. On receiving this transfer, I had to expand it by injecting KES 10000 into it and obtained more chickens and eggs to sell. I was intending to save KES 20000 out of the transfer towards a project we needed to start early next year but instead, we decided to obtain a heifer with the same avoiding the risk of spending the amount on other unplanned projects. I also bought two sheep each at KES 5000, paid KES 5000 school fees for my grade 4 son, and the remaining KES9000 on obtaining enough foodstuff and other household goods that we had been using since we received the money.