I sell in one of the shops located at our nearest trading centers and we usually spend what I am paid at the end of the day on food. Currently, the new goal that I have in life is to build a permanent house made of bricks. We currently live in a house made of mud and as the world revolutionizes, houses made of mud signify poverty. I do not have money at the moment to use in achieving this goal but I believe that I will fulfill this dream with time since I do not want to remain the way I am.

I do not see anything that I was not pleased with by GiveDirectly. This is because it is an independent organization that is transparent in all its dealings. During the enrollment process, I did not witness any form of discrimination and this made us happier knowing that we’ve been treated equally aside from receiving the financial aid.

When I received my second transfer, I spent KES 46000 to purchase two heifers and used the remaining amount on food and other household necessities. The heifers are an investment to me that will serve as our source of income. In our region, we depend mostly on dairy farming since the prices of farm inputs have continued to increase while the sizes of land decreases. Because of this, crop farming is no longer profitable as it used to before.

It was around 10:30 am and I was at my shop selling when I suddenly heard my phone ringing hence notifying me of a new message. I hurriedly checked it since I had been eagerly waiting for an SMS bearing good news about the transfer. We had heard people in our village earlier talking about the transfers having been sent and hence I had kept on checking my phone. I was hence so happy and I could not believe my eyes when I saw the SMS saying that we had received the KES 55000 that GiveDirectly had promised us. I immediately closed the shop and I went and withdrew the money before I headed home to go inform my wife about it. She was so happy on hearing this and we celebrated together. We then sat down and we started planning on how we were going to spend it.

The transfer has brought a very big difference in our daily lives as a family. My wife now has a source of income through the sale of milk from the cow that we bought. She usually sells 4 liters of milk in the morning and the money that she gets, she uses on the purchase of the small household items such as sugar, soap, etc. She has thus helped me a lot in reducing the budget costs that I use to incur. As a result of this, my shop business has grown since I have managed to reinvest most of the profit into the business. We are thus grateful to GiveDirectly for supporting us.

We spent KES 45000 of our recent transfer on buying a cow and its calf. We decided to buy the cow so that my wife could be empowered too and have a source of income. She can sell some of the milk from the cow and earn some income. This way she will have money to buy the small essential household items such as sugar, soap, etc, and hence I will no longer struggle a lot with all the expenses. We had two cows before but their milk production is low. It has always been our wish to buy a more productive cow but we did not have the money to buy one. The money that I have been making from the small shop that I own, has only been enough to meet the needs of my family, that is, to buy food and pay school fees for my child. With the remaining transfer amount, we spent it on buying maize for our consumption and clothes for our children.