As I said I am the only breadwinner in my house supporting my mother, wife, and child. This has been difficult since I no longer make as much as I used to before fuel prices were hiked. I have wanted to help my wife set up a business to help increase our monthly income. I plan to help her open a vegetable stall which will cost me approximately $100. I plan to save from my transfers and my work till I get this amount so that we can start this business.

I am a father of one and my wife is a housewife. I run a motorcycle business. My business proceeds have reduced due to increased fuel prices that forced us to increase our transport charges which in turn reduced the number of people who are willing to pay the much we ask for the services we provide. The transfers I have been receiving have been majorly directed to pay for food debts and also buying food. In October I paid debts for the food I had taken from a local shop of $13 and bought food for $21. In November I spent $10 on food and paid $21 to till my land, the remaining $4 bought a chicken. During the festivities $19 bought food while the remaining $15 I bought new clothes for my child.

\ I have a plan to establish a vegetable-selling business within our village. Currently, there is a high demand for vegetables due to the abundant maize harvest from local farms. To manage the business, I intend to entrust my wife with its operations, while I continue working as a motorcycle taxi driver. This business will serve as an additional source of income to complement my job and help us meet our financial needs. I am incredibly thankful for the financial support that has significantly contributed to improving my life.

During this financially challenging period, I used $24 from my August transfers to buy flour. Being a motorcycle taxi driver, I often face difficult situations that result in a lack of income. There are days when I wake up early and work all day, only to return home empty-handed. The responsibility of supporting my mother, wife, and child solely rests on my shoulders. Despite these difficulties, I am grateful that the food I purchased helped prevent hunger within my family. In times when I couldn't earn any income, I resorted to buying food on credit from a local shop. As a result, I had to allocate $5 from my August transfers to repay the debt I had accumulated. Additionally, I decided to invest $5 in purchasing two hens. I see this as a future investment because once they reproduce, my initial investment will grow, and I can sell them at a profit.

Since last year, it has not rained and life is really becoming unbearable. I currently work as a motorcyclist and people barely have money for food leave alone taking motorbikes as a means of transport. The most I can get in a day is $4 and that will only be enough for petrol for a day; nothing to eat, nothing to save. There are days that I will go home empty-handed after staying in the scorching sun for the whole day. For now, I am planning to continue investing most of my transfers in buying goats because they are capable of surviving in the drought, and once it rains, I will go sell them and get my family daily cows that we can milk from and also feed it and when they grow we sell them at a profit. I also have plans of joining my wife in selling of vegetables because what people need the most is food to make them strong and survive these tough times. I will be using my motorbike to go to a nearby village called Gana and purchase the vegetables in bulk at a cheaper price and sell it to my neighbour at affordable prices.

I am the breadwinner of my beautiful family who really really works hard to make ends meet. I have one amazing wife that works equally hard to sell vegetables near our home but at times things do not go as planned and end up selling nothing. The moment I started receiving my transfers from GiveDirectly was the moment I started purchasing goats and it did cost me around $25 to buy one goat. I was really happy and thanked the Almighty God that I could even afford to buy myself a goat. As time went by, I kept adding goats, and with also the recent transfer I bought one more goat at $25. I currently have five goats and I believe the more transfers I receive the more goats I will purchase. For the remaining amount of $9, I was able to shop for food and stock it at home. Thanks to GiveDirectly we are able to eat well.

My main objective currently is to ensure that my children's education is not interrupted because of fee arrears. It's the monthly transfer that has helped them reach where they are now, one in high school and three in primary school. I do not have a single source of income that would have helped me pay their fees apart from the transfers. As a parent, my prayer is that my children will achieve their career goals despite the financial challenges I am facing. I am also planning to save an amount in order to buy goats, which are assets that I can also rely on, even when GiveDirectly phases out since they will reproduce and increase in number.

My first priority when I received the transaction shifted immediately on nourishment for my family and myself because hunger was one of our biggest challenges due to drought. I instantly went ahead to withdraw the money and spend KES 2,400 by purchasing a bag of maize flour which contained a dozen packets. I then ended up spending the remaining KES 1,000 when buying iron sheets because I was still in the process of trying to finish up on my house.

For some time, I have been longing to begin poultry farming. Because I do not have a kitchen structure when I received the transfer I spent KES 1500 on buying three local hens because maintaining them is easy. I look forward to scaling up this venture because it is lucrative and can be helpful to me in the future. Because of the hard economic times, I opted to use KES 600 to buy maize flour that can comfortably take my family for the next week. Since the progress of building my house is ongoing, I decided to use the rest of the transfer to support buying nails for my house construction.

The unconditional transfers from GiveDirectly really impact livelihoods and give hope to the less privileged of facing life more boldly.

The lack of adequate funds to sustain a family is a major setback and being the sole breadwinner to our small family, the struggle has been real. I do casual jobs at times when they are available and my wife mostly stays at home as a housewife as she has no job. The KES 3000 from GiveDirectly really brought happiness to our home as I was able to buy food to last us a week and a half at KES 1500 since what was left was little and could not last long. Being a poultry farmer, I bought four chicken at KES 800 and one duck at KES 500 which I rare at home from the coop I constructed. The remaining KES 200, I bought some personal stuff for use at home.

I rely on operating people's motorcycles whenever they are on break as means of earning income. On this particular day, I was out to try my luck when I received a text message confirming the receipt of money from GiveDirectly. It was such a happy moment and I immediately called my spouse to inform her of the good news. She was equally happy because things were not pleasant back at home. We were in a tough financial state.

So far I have not seen any biggest difference in my daily life since I started receiving the transfers. I was given a phone which was deducted from my first transfer leaving me with KES 1200. It came in handy to solve the most basic need we lacked at that time which was food for my household. I am hoping to see more improvements in the future, especially in income sources. Currently, I operate people's motorcycles whenever they are on break but it is usually not reliable. I am hoping to save the coming transfers so that I can acquire a motorcycle.

Part of my transfers was deducted for a phone that was given to me by the GiveDirectly field officers at the enrollment stage thus I received KES 1200. I do not have a reliable source of income but operate people's motorcycles on a part-time basis whenever they are on break and whenever I am not lucky I go home empty-handed. At the time when I received the transfer, we were financially down, and we had no foodstuffs in the house. I, therefore, bought corn, vegetables, and some of the dry foodstuffs with the whole of the transfer.