My life is now different in that I now have a business. My days are busy with something constructive unlike before when I would sit around most of the time waiting to be called for any available jobs. I also have some income everyday, unlike before when I would depend on unpredictable jobs.

My new goals are to invest in farming in my rural home in Gem constituency in Siaya county. I intend to plant water melon in my home for commercial purposes. Water melon farming has recently become quite a marketable venture.

I spent most of my second transfers to open up a restaurant at Muthurwa Market in the Central Business District. I secured a stall in the Market and I equipped the stall with seats, tables and cooking equipment. I was previously engaged in casual jobs; mostly construction jobs, which were not so reliable as they could be scarce at times. It has been a struggle to provide for my family of two children with the little income I would make from these jobs. I would spend most of my time hanging around with my peers in my neighborhood as we waited for these jobs. I was never comfortable with this way of life, I felt ashamed to sit around in the streets most of the time. But now I have my own business where I spend my time attending to customers and trying to grow the business. I also get some income everyday out of the business unlike before. My life has truly changed.

I am planning to start a hotel business because I have a lot of experience since I was once employed in a hotel. I also have a lot of interest in doing the job. I was very keen on how the daily operations were being done hence I believe I have the right knowledge and experiance to start my own.

Life was not that easy because I did not have any source of capital since I used to depend on casual jobs that were not well paying and also unreliable. Paying rent was a big obstacle due to little income I used to get from those casual jobs, as a result, I had three-month rent arrears. I was living a stressful life because getting money to settle that debt at once was a dream to me and to make it worse. The more I could stay there the more it adds up. It had reached a point I was given only one more chance with my landlord to clear the debt or else he was going to kick me out of his house with my family. I thank Give Directly because they came to my rescue during this horrible situation I was going through. Even my neighbours could now gossip about me and my wife, I had totally lost my self-esteem. The moment I received the transfer I paid house arrears first because that was the only stress I had, I could not even sleep when I thought that one day I was going to be kicked out by the land lord. This is the greatest difference in my life, I no longer have stress and I now have a voice to talk to my neigbours too.

I had rent arrears that were really giving me a lot of stress and in fact, the Land Lord promised to kick me out of the house by the end month. The moment I received my transfer I used part of it to settle the rent arrears worth Kes 6000. I have a plan of starting hotel business though currently, most items like utensils are very expensive due to Christmas season since many people are buying. I decided to save the remaining amount of money in my mpesa account towards that project that I am planning to start in the month of January next year. I have some good knowledge on that business because I was once working for someone for two years. Demand for foodstuffs in slums is very high and I believe my financial life will change positively because of the business.

I was very excited when I got the message indicating I had received money from GD in the morning. I left it in my MPesa account for a period of one week because I did not want to show my friends that I had money.