My life is currently different from how it was four months ago in that I have been able to construct a pit latrine with the help of GiveDirectly transfers. I have also been able to afford the cost of the basic household needs for my family over the past month. This was the toughest month for us considering that we did not have any harvest at all. I was therefore forced to have an extra budget for maize that would sustain us for the whole month.

Currently, I do not have a kitchen and I normally cook in the open air. This is so uncomfortable for me and more especially when there are heavy rains. On such days I am forced to cook early and wait for the right time to take our meals which forces us to eat cold food. It is for this reason that I am planning to purchase some building materials that will help me construct a kitchen. This, I plan to do in the next four months with the help of GiveDirectly transfers.

The biggest difference in my daily life in the last four months preceding the current transfers is that I am now living a more comfortable life than the one I lived four months ago. Previously I used to defecate in the bush which was not healthy at all. We could not help but use the bush since we did not have a latrine and the little income that I got was always enough to buy food thus I could not afford to build a latrine. This often left me at loggerheads with the public health officers. I was always on the run whenever I heard that they were patrolling in the village. That is now a thing of the past after I used part of the transfer to build a latrine. The transfers have restored the dignity of my family and have seen us live a more comfortable life than we lived before.

My current goal is to save some money so that I can use it later to construct a kitchen because I do not have one at the moment. In the next six months, I believe I shall have constructed a kitchen already.

My life is currently different because I was able to buy maize for consumption for my family. This means that we can eat well now as we can afford to buy the food. I also bought hybrid maize seeds for planting. This will boost my income because when we harvest, we can sell the surplus and also consume.

I had started building a kitchen but had to stop because I did not have enough building materials. I want to buy iron sheets each month and use in finish building the kitchen so that I have a better kitchen.

The biggest difference in my life right now is that I bought hybrid seeds for planting. Usually, I plant the normal seeds which do not do well in our area which has limited rain. The normal seeds give little harvest that gets finished before the next season.

I am planning to save and buy building materials i.e. iron sheets that I will use to finish building my kitchen. I shall have a beautiful and spacious kitchen by the end of those months.

My life is currently different from how it was four months ago because, l no longer help myself in the bush as l use to do before and this has really improve my standard of health.

I do not have any new goal a part from spending this money on food being that, the few months that are coming are the months that people do experience anger.

The biggest difference in my daily life is that, l now have a pit latrine because l spent give directly money to dig and build a pit latrine, as compared to before when l was using bush a pit latrine and this was not healthy.

In the next six months l expect to have started saving to plaster the pit latrine that l had built.

Right now I have a water reservation tank that helps me tap rain water so that I have some water to use during the dry seasons. In as much as the water tank is not as big as I would wish, it helps me a lot.

I have a plan of getting a new house for my family because the house that I live in today is in a bad shape. The walls of the house have been falling off slowly and i fear that the house might collapse very soon. The plan is that I will buy a few bags of cement and sand that I will use to plaster my walls on both the interior and exterior section.

When the GD officers came for registration at our place I had an idea of building a house but then I later changed my mind about building the house and opted to build a toilet. I never had a toilet before and that forced me and my family members to go for the long calls in the bush some miles away from my compound. Our neighbors have cleared their land so the our surrounding environs is so clear meaning that we had to go for the long call miles away in the bushes where nobody could see us. I had to walk a distance of around one kilometer away. When members of the village used to see me passing-by their houses during the day headed towards the bush, they used to talk very negatively about it and that alone made me get so embarrassed. During the days when the public health officers came to the village to teach the village members about health practices, every ones opinions and contributions during the teachings were directed towards me and I never felt so good about it. Additionally, the village elder together with the community health worker were always on my neck every time week in week out depriving me of my peace of mind. Finally I managed to build a new latrine and right now all members of my family do not have to go to the bushes to relieve themselves and I am no longer the laughing stock of the village.

I believe that by then I will have a new house and definitely moved away from this poor structure that keeps scaring me every day. I have started buying new iron sheets and timber that I will use for the construction purposes. I will no longer have to fear every fear it rains in our village.

The biggest difference in my daily life is that I have a latrine. My compound is now open defecation free.

In the next six months,I expect to have started the house construction project that I have always wanted.

Were it not for GiveDirectly,I could still be using the fields for nature calls but now I have a pit latrine. A permanent structure.

My new goal is to build a more spacious house.