In recent months, motorcycle taxi has been my primary source of income for my family, having facilitated my children to attend school and eat adequately at home. The small savings I have been making with the village's informal savings groups have been made possible by the proceeds of the same business. At the moment, I am looking forward to a more profitable venture in livestock farming. Adding another dairy cow to the one I already have will result in increased production, and I will have to forego the motorcycle taxi in order to focus on feeding the cows.

Everyone was careful to transform their families when GiveDirectly gave us the freedom to choose how to spend our transfers because we knew it was a support that would never come again. Receiving such a large sum with no restrictions on spending was incredible to me because it was the first time I had witnessed such a gesture in my life. Following the teachings from the initial meetings, I ensured that I make the best decisions for my family. I am grateful for the outcomes, and would encourage GiveDirectly to continue their incredible work in other villages.

On a typical day with my entire family of four at home, I spend at least $2 on milk. With an unreliable source of income, this has always seemed expensive to me, and I have been contemplating on ways to reduce the cost. I purchased a heifer with the first transfer, which could not provide an immediate solution to this problem. To stop the daily spending, I also spent $400 on a lactating dairy cow from the second transfer, which has provided us with enough milk to date. I am relieved that I will not have to spend as much as before, and that I can put the money I have saved towards other basic needs for my family. I spent $32 on groceries and the remainder on new clothes for my two children and their mother.

It was 6 pm when I had just dropped off a customer that I was ferrying on my motorcycle when I thought of checking my phone. I saw that I had a new message which apparently, I had received at 5 pm but I didn't hear my phone ringing. I opened it to see what it was all about and I was surprised to find out that it was an SMS indicating that I had received KES 55000 in my mobile money account from GiveDirectly. I was so happy on seeing this that I immediately called my wife and I informed her the good news. She was so thrilled and we gave thanks to God for the blessing since we now knew that the plans that we had made, were now going to be fulfilled.

Our living standards have improved having built another house that is roofed with iron sheets with the transfer money. We now have enough space to ourselves and we are happy because we managed to finally fulfill our wish.

For the longest time, my wife and I had thought of building another decent house for ourselves but we were not in a position to since we didn't have the money. The opportunity to build another one presented itself when GiveDirectly came up with this program of helping the less fortunate in our community. We had only one small grass-thatched house and hence we decided to build another one that is roofed with iron sheets at a cost of more than KES 30000. We also bought maize at KES 5000 for our consumption and with the remaining amount, we spent on buying clothes for our children.