The challenge I am facing currently is to pay school fees for my children. I have two school going children, one in PP1 and the other in PP2. I do not have a job and depend fully on my husband who sells palm wine within the village. The palm wine harvest is little because of the effects of the drought on the coconut trees. This has affected my husband’s business, and he earns very little from it. Previously, he would harvest the palm wine daily, but currently he does it only two days a week. With the limited income, we cannot cater our daily needs of food and paying off school fees. It is for this reason that I spent a huge portion of the transfer to clear the school fee debts for my two children that had accumulated over the three months. After paying the KSH 2000, they went back to school and continued with their education. Finally, I spent the remaining KSH 1000 to buy food for the family. I bought six packets of maize flour, 1 kg of sugar and 1 kg of beans.

I used the first transfer to buy food. When the second transfer came around, my child had been sent home from school and it had been about a week. I therefore used the transfer to pay for his school fees. The rest, I bought clothes with as it was the festive season.

Through GiveDirectly we have another source of income in our home which comes in handy especially last month because my husband is a palm wine tapper and with the drought there is barely anything to harvest which means without the having received the funds my child and I would not have got any medical attention because we could not afford it.

At this moment I happen to be in a family way and during the time the money was sent I was actually feeling a bit unwell and so was my youngest daughter, so after receiving the money we went ahead and visited a private hospital for proper attention ad medical care. The doctors informed me the baby was not sitting quite well and they gave me medication which cost me KES 2,000 meanwhile my daughter was suffering from my malaria and I paid KES 1,000 for her medication.

I was very happy because at the moment I am actually in a family way and just imagine the night before receiving the money me, my husband and three of our children had all gone to bed hungry and it was devastating. Unfortunately it happens more than we would like it to, so waking up to that message made me so emotional and overjoyed.

Escaping hunger is definitely a huge difference and a huge help because even seeing my kids going to bed hungry and trying to convince them that the next day they will get food breaks my heart especially when I myself do not know if that is a possibility. My husband is a palm wine tapper which earns the bare minimum while I am a stay home mother and even though I wanted to work at the moment it proves difficult because of my pregnancy.

After receiving the money my spouse and I decided on caring for our family's nutrition so we went ahead and bought a sack of maize flour that contained ten packets inside and we got it at KES 1000 and as for the remainder of the money we bought three kilograms of beans which was KES 360 and therefore we added KES 160 from our savings to be able to make the purchase.