Three months ago, my husband who is a mason was arrested while working for employer who was building on an illegal land something that he was unaware of. Then, I was a house wife and things took a different difficult turn because I had nothing to give my children or bail out my husband. I started fundraising towards bailing him out but because I couldn't raise the required amount, I borrowed some money to top up. Eventually, he was released and came back home awaiting to get a job. I have been spending my last three transfers to pay debt and provide food and water for my seven children. The money has not been enough to pay all the bills and I resulted to buying food on credit from my shop keeper. Having one meal per day became our new norm as the money couldn't afford us three meals as the bigger percentage would be spend to pay debt. I have also accumulated huge fees arrears which I'm looking forward to redeem with my next subsequent monthly transfers.

Receiving money from GiveDirectly every month has been my greatest joy. In my life, I have never received any aid money every month. I am so much happy about this. There is nothing I don't like about the strategy of giving us this aid.

This money came when I least expected. I have four girls and two boys. I am a peasant farmer but currently, we are experiencing a great drought. No water for domestic use. No harvest since we have not tilled or planted our farms. Paster and animals are dying due to a lack of adequate food. Life has become so hard with no hope. But thank you so much for the aid I have started receiving. It has restored my hopes for tomorrow and I believe I will never lack food again and water. I spent the second transfer as follows; kes. 1300 to buy food. Kes. 1000 Paid school fees. And the remaining Kes. 700 spent in buying soap, sugar and cooking oil. The first transfer, helped me on settling hospital bill of Kes. 300 since my son was sick and needed medication. Kes. 400 on food and Kes. 500 in water. Thank you so much GiveDirectly.

I was just home that day and I was actually feeling unwell when my child informed that money from GiveDirectly had come through and to say I was excited would be an understatement because at the time I was in such a financial fix. To me it felt heaven sent and I did wait for long because that same day I ensured that I visited the hospital and at this moment my health has improved.

I am so grateful for the financial assistance that I am receiving and for this past month my family and I actually went weeks without having to go to bed hungry and that is a blessing. Apart from that I managed to pay tuition for my children and they continued with their education which makes me extremely happy as a parent.

On most occasions I am a subsistence farmer but unfortunately this year I did not participate in any planting because of the drought that has affected our village adversely and that is why the minute I received the money I thought of nutrition because my children and I had to go hungry severally. I went ahead and bought ten packets of maize flour which cost me KES 1,000, I also bought six gallons of water due to the scarcity which cost me KES 200 and a kilogram of sugar and sardines each KES 100 respectively. Then two out of my seven children had been sent home from school and had stayed home two days so I gave them KES 1,000 to be split among them equally so that they could resume classes. Unfortunately at the time I was also feeling unwell so I seeked medical attention where I paid KES 500 to the doctors.