"I currently live in a makeshift house. Started building a 2-roomed house 2 years ago. During rainy seasons it's difficult sleeping for me. I live in a hut and the goats sleep nearby. It's really difficult for me when my two daughters visit. As they visit, I ask neighbors to host them which stresses me a lot. This has affected my ability to stay with my daughters since I separated with my wife."

"I hope to accomplish my goal of acquiring a parcel of land in the next year and beyond. There is a parcel of land that I had identified, and the seller had agreed to sell it out to us at $100. So far, I have not made any payment though I am working on how to raise some money to commit. That parcel will assist me in locating a suitable location for subsistence cultivation. It will aid in obtaining other sources of income. The acquisition of that amount is my key goal this year as I continue to get transfers. I am grateful to GiveDirectly for the financial support."

"In the next year, I hope to accomplish the goal of increasing the size of my livestock farm. My main goal has been to buy more goats and raise them. They are valuable live assets that will bring supplementary income to my household in the long run if they survive. As a result, I will find it so easy to pay for my children's secondary school tuition. My spouse and I will find life to be pretty easy in terms of raising additional money for food and other family development plans."

"Food access is a big problem. I stay with my grandchild and it's not easy getting a meal. It's very expensive to buy food, 1 kilo of maize flour costs $1. We also buy all other food items because of the drought. Due to the long drought, I have sold most of my goats. I used to have over 10 goats. Now I only have 3. The only source of income is my goats or help from my children. It worries me knowing that I have very few goats."

"The hardest thing we're facing now as a family is lack of enough food. The drought brought up food shortage since we did not plant our farms. The last time we planted maize and made good harvest was in 2020. The sustained drought has made it difficult producing more food. This has really affected our ability to put food on the table, daily for our 3 children. Now we depend on casual jobs to survive. It's hard getting them. To make matters worse the cost of buying food is high. Here in the village one is paid $2.5 per days work. It's not enough to provide for us."

"I have lived a life of misery and destitution. In terms of life challenges, I have seen it all. The feeling of non- enoughness can be especially acute and undermining. I have lived each day as it comes, hopeless about where the next meal will come from. I am more worried since I did not take lunch today and I am uncertain where I will get the money to buy dinner. Life is hard enough. I have lived all along as a bachelor since no lady could accept to marry me because I am poverty stricken and cannot be able to provide. It is my wish that I will be better someday and live a good life like other people."

"We are people of little means who live from hand to mouth. We depend on casual jobs which are rare to come by and so getting money to fend for the family is hard to the extent that putting food on the table is a tall order, so we are grappling with the challenge of food insecurity, this has preyed upon our greatest fear. As parents, we feel bad when our children go to bed on an empty stomach. It pains and it is so haunting, we are always immersed in deep thoughts of uncertainties that we somehow feel we have failed to provide for them nor done enough to better the situation. The cost of living has risen up and at times when we are lucky to get casual jobs the wages are never enough to purchase enough food to last for some days."

"Food insecurity is the greatest challenge in this area due to drought. For the past three years, we have not harvested any food staff from our farms due to inconsistent rainfall. My husband and I rely on casual jobs to earn a living, and because of the inconsistency in income, it is hard enough to afford three meals a day but only two. Food prices have relatively gone up recently and with the rising cost of living, we use all our hard-earned money to buy food for our family of five."

"The biggest challenge I'm faced with is the lack of food. I'm living with my daughter who is a returnee and I'm the sole provider for the seven of us. Food has become a challenge since we have experienced prolonged droughts which has led to our farms being unproductive. We long for rains to come so that we can grow some maize to sustain us through the rest of this year."

"The greatest challenge that I face at the moment is the lack of food. This has come about because of the prolonged drought that has hit our county for the past three months. In addition to this, I also live in a poor structure and since the rains have started, I get rained on and I fear that I might contract some airborne diseases such as a common cold."