I have an additional goal of constructing rental houses. We have a large piece of land that extends to the main road. Since our town is expanding towards our home area, I believe the houses will be a hot cake. I am hoping to earn a good income from the houses once I get enough money to construct them. The additional income will enable me to improve my family's living standards.

In my opinion, Give Directly is doing well by following up every time after sending money to us. These shows concern and through this, we are encouraged to spend the money wisely. On the other hand, there is nothing that Give Directly is not doing well.

I bought a cow at KES 22000 using the second transfer. I had one cow and I know the benefits that they come with. Besides, I have enough skills and experience in matters of rearing livestock. Currently, I make KES 200 daily from the milk sales, at the same time I still have enough for my family consumption. I am hopeful that once the other cow gives birth then the income will be tripled. The rest of the money I spent on both building materials (iron sheets, nails, doors, timber) and building labor for constructing a house for my children to sleep in. The previous house was infested with termites. Both the walls and roof were on the verge of falling down despite constant spraying with insecticides. This was consuming much of my resources but still, there was no success. I, therefore, felt it was wise and cheaper to construct a new house.

The excitement was almost getting out of hand when I first realized that I had received the full amount that I was promised to receive when I was enrolled. I had been anticipating and would instantly confirm every message coming in that week with the hope that it would be the one from GiveDirectly since I never had an exact date. I was on my way back after delivering milk at the collection center when I finally received two concurrent messages one from the service provider and the second one right from the Mpesa. Holding my breath, I opened and read and had to run all the way home passing several homes on the way whose members had already received and were already celebrating as well. I needed to break the news to my family and celebrate together. Even though my husband was not home then, I had to call him and relay the information that he received with excitement too. We thanked God and agreed to proceed with all the plans that we had in place.

The biggest difference in my daily life after receiving the first transfer is the investment in an additional dairy cow in our field. To me, this is a great deal of an investment that will increase milk production to make us realize a better profit margin and therefore better savings that will ease settling of all the household bills that we had been struggling with in the past few months. I am grateful to GiveDirectly for the huge support that has boosted our morale and rejuvenated the spirit of hard work that was slowly dying after strings of challenges that we had been facing in the past years.

The huge dependency on livestock farming that even though had been on small scale had been so helpful in settling most if not all our financial obligations as a household. On receiving the first transfer, we had agreed to bring in another dairy cow to add to the two that we had been having on our farm. I was glad to secure a good breed from a neighbor who was selling at KES25000. This will see us increase the production of milk that will, in turn, boost our savings towards the school fees for my four sons. I also spent approximately KES28000 on the construction of a new house that will still be occupied by my two elder sons and later by all the four sons. They had been moving out to the neighborhood to find a space to sleep which would disadvantage them a lot since they could not do their evening studies. With the remaining amount, I obtained a sack of dry maize grains and other household goods that we had exhausted.