Ever since we started burning charcoal and selling in order to get our income, our lives managed to improve a bit. However, our good days of living were short lived. Around early last year when the government placed a ban on the burning of charcoal, our source of income was greatly affected when buyers reduced significantly. We work so hard to get the product ready but there are no buyers. Our finances have greatly dwindled and affording necessary commodities around the household are proving to be too difficult by each passing day that the ban continues to exist. Farming that used to supplement for the tough times whenever we ploughed our farms has also been greatly affected by the ongoing drought. I feel like I am trapped in a financial crisis that I do not know how to escape from and I can only pray for the ban to be lifted.

I am mostly happy in the evening when I return home from the fields and I manage to take a bath then relax afterwards. For the better part of the day,I am mostly engaged in the fields cutting logs, arranging them and setting up the furnace for burning my charcoal. The task is tiresome more so when combined with the scotching sun and I really look forward to coming back home in the evening to rest.

I come from a pastoralist community and from what I have seen, so many of the people who have livestock of their own are faring on very well in life. They are able to educate their children to higher levels, plough larger portions of their farms on time during the rainy seasons and even sought out any emergency issue that arises with so much ease. As a family, we have always wished to have our own stock so that we could also enjoy the same benefits but our wishes have always remained to be a piped dream due to lack of finances to purchase even a goat. However, with this money, we see our life time dream coming true. We plan to buy two dairy cows,two oxen and an ox plough to expand our farming and also be hiring out at a fee and also buy several goats for keeping.