FINAL REPORT - FSD Kenya

iii. The respondents belonged to two categories: guardians or orphans and vulnerable children
(OVC) or those who relied on relief agencies and governments for relief food (Hunger Safety
Net) categories. The difficulties are briefly explained:
o Difficulties of paying school fees for children in secondary schools and difficulties in buying
school items e.g. uniforms and books for primary school going children. The direct
consequence of this is a highly illiterate society.
o Difficulties in getting paid employment due to high levels of illiteracy and absence of
industries in the district.
o Difficulties in getting food as the soils cannot yield crops and the main source of
livelihood, cattle, is sometimes wiped away by flood related diseases such as anthrax or
rift valley fever or hunger as a result of drought. Investigation into the seasonal flows
of incomes and expenditures revealed that respondents do not have any source of
incomes for 8 months of a year.
o Diseases and long illnesses is another major difficulty among respondents who are either
widows or women whose husbands have migrated to look for employment. Such
women have difficulties in providing basic necessities like medicines, food and clothes.
Diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea are rampant after floods while long illnesses like
pneumonia may be associated with cold after rains or any other source that did not
come out clearly.
o Lack of shelter is one of the major difficulties among respondents. The herios huts that are
commonly built in Garissa leak are easily washed away during floods and harbour
snakes or mosquitoes.
2.5.2 Cash Demands and Coping Mechanisms
Respondents need cash to meet their basic needs that include the following paying school fees for their
children and the orphans under their care; buying food and repair their houses; buying drugs and cope
with emergencies; and putting aside savings (mainly in kind – in livestock) to meet life cycle events
such as marriage of children.
The respondents live from hand to mouth mainly on relief food or proceeds from sale of charcoal,
casual employment, or petty trade. The main coping strategy among respondents used to be liquidation
of assets to raise cash to pay school fees, emergency hospitalization, or to buy drugs. However, today,
they do not have cattle and many of them depend on relief aid and friends for food and other support or
migration to look for casual labour, pasture, employment or petty trade. A few respondents close to River Tana
practice subsistence farming.
2.5.3 Demand for Financial Services: Savings, Credit and Money Transfer
Garissa town has commercial banks such as KCB, PostBank, and Barclays Bank and Posta for money
transfer services, while the rest of the District does not have formal financial institutions. Discussions
in remote rural areas revealed that no financial institution exist in the towns or villages almost all
the respondents had never used any formal system to save or borrow money and had sketchy
information about financial institutions and their services. Posta closed its office in Balambala two
years ago and no one uses its services any more. The major sources of credit therefore are friends,
relatives, shopkeepers and to a small extent from moneylenders. Informal mechanisms for saving,
borrowing and money transfer in Garissa District in terms of preference are:
• Savings in kind (buying and selling animals) which is preferred but risky;
• Saving at home in tins or pots;
• Saving with shop keepers; and
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