Our new goal is to build another house. We would like to build a nice house that is made of timber planks on the walls and roofed with iron sheets. The houses that we have, have grown old and they are mud-walled. It has always been our wish to build another house but we have not been in a position to due to a lack of money. I usually depend on casual labour of farming to earn a living while my husband is a mason of simple structures. Construction work is not always available and hence the money that he makes is also not much. The money that we make is thus always only enough to buy food and milk.

GiveDirectly staff are very patient and concerned. They wanted to make sure that they enrolled everyone who belonged to the village so that they could all get the transfers that will help them. They waited patiently whenever they did not find the owner of the house at home. I used to think that such kinds of help were only given to the rich, but with GiveDirectly, they were not biased. I am thus happy because I never thought I will be able to get such a huge sum of money. I hence do not see anything wrong with how they do their work and I hence urge them to keep up the good work.

We spent KES 20000 of our recent transfer on paying school fees for our child who is in secondary school. We were owing to the school a lot of money and we had requested them to hold on a bit and not to send our child home due to the arrears. We are glad that they granted us our request and hence our child's studies were not disrupted during the academic term. We also spent KES 8000 on buying two bags of maize for our consumption. We were buying maize daily and hence we saw it wise to buy some that will sustain us for a while. I usually get chest pains from doing heavy work of farming. I have thus been able to rest a bit from doing the casual jobs of farming to get money for buying food and milk. We also bought a television at KES 10000. With the remaining transfer money, we used it in buying clothes for our eight children. We are thus grateful to GiveDirectly for everything.

I had left my phone on charging while I continued with my household chores. I remember that it was at 6 pm when I took it from charging and realized that I had an unread message. My heart was filled with joy on reading the Mpesa message and I even forgot to call one of my friends who had requested me to call her as she had something to inform. I then rushed to where my spouse and children were, shared with them the news and they became so happy and suggested that we should celebrate the entry of GiveDirectly to our village.

I majorly depend on any available casual works ranging from working on people's farms to helping them with their house chores. I would be given a liter or two of milk at the end of the day instead of being given money. I am glad that this is no longer the case since I was able to purchase a dairy cow using my recent transfer. Since we get milk from it, I have resorted to working for people, get paid, and use the money to meet some of our needs. This has changed my daily life since apart from working for other people, I am always home on time so that I can feed my cow.

When GiveDirectly came for enrollment, we decided as a family that we would spend the first transfer to purchase a dairy cow. This is because buying milk has been our routine and we are at times forced to take tea without milk. Since milk has become a rare commodity in our region, I usually work at people's farms or help them with their domestic chores and get paid by being given milk instead of cash. When I received the financial aid, we actualized our dream by spending KES 40000 on the purchase of a dairy cow. Also, I spent KES 10000 to pay school fees for my son in secondary school to avoid him from being sent back home and used the remaining KES 4000 to purchase one sack of maize for our consumption.