I have one lactating dairy cow that provides us with some liters of milk. We also have a heifer that I am hopeful will increase production in the future. I have a new goal to add another cow that will provide surplus liters for sale. We have plenty of space on our field that can accommodate up to five cattle, and this will come in handy when we sell the extra liters of milk to pay household bills.

GiveDirectly gave us monetary support that met individual needs since we got the freedom to spend on everything we needed in our households. To my family, boosting the current business and completing the construction of a new house topped our list. I am glad that we achieved the goal. I liked the entire process and am confident that every villager is grateful as well.

My husband runs a mobile money shop in the nearby shopping center that we have always depended on as an ultimate source of income in our household. On receiving the second transfer, I added KES 30000 of my second transfer to the business, and even though it is not much lucrative at the moment, my family of four has never skipped a meal. I spent the remaining amount on completing the construction of a house that started right after receiving the first transfer. Initially, I lived in an old structure and had to demolish and construct a new one with better walls.

It was 6 in the morning and we had just woken up to prepare our children to go to school. I decided to check my phone and I found out that I had a new message. I opened it to check the contents, and to my surprise, the SMS was saying that we had received KES 55000 from GiveDirectly as promised. I was so happy and I immediately showed my husband the message. He was so happy too on learning about the good news and we thanked God for the blessing.

The transfer brought a very big difference in our lives as a family. This is because with having invested more money in the M-Pesa business, the business has improved and hence we have managed to get more income than before. We have hence had enough money to cater for all our needs.

We spent the first transfer money on two important things. We spent KES 20000 on building another house and the remaining amount of money, we invested in the M-Pesa business that we had. We had started the construction of another house and we had bought some of the materials needed for the construction. We had thought of constructing a mud-walled house but when we received the transfer, we decided to buy the wooden planks for the walls. We had not constructed another house because my father-in-law had not shown us where we were going to build our house. The place that we were living in was hence not the right place that we were supposed to settle. We also decided to invest in the business because it had gone down, and also because this was our main source of income. Investing more money hence meant that the business will grow and we were going to get more income. The money that we usually get from the M-Pesa business is what we usually depend on to pay school fees for our two children who are in boarding school and to buy food. Apart from the business, we also usually practice farming where we grow maize. The maize however does not usually do well, and hence the little that we harvest is always only enough for subsistence use. We are hence grateful to GiveDirectly for the support that they gave us.