"Seeing Sofilet Twaya six years ago you would have shed a tear" claim the neighbors to the 60-year-old mother to one (but a caregiver to five children), who has a touching story to share.

Her story begins 10 years back when she lost her husband and was forced to leave the husband's village which had been home for over 20 years.

"When he died the relatives decided to sale the place we were living at, so I and the children were forced to come back to my home village where I had no place either."

"My relatives offered me a small kitchen with one extra room to be my house, and in the condition, I was it felt like home," explained Twaya.

She said five more years down the line her life was stagnant because there was literally nothing, she could do to make progress.

"I had no money to even start a small business. The only thing we were doing were piece works in order to find food for the day, otherwise even my relatives were not in a position that they could help me out," she further said.

A believer in God, Twaya said she always kept praying for a miracle, until some day it came in the form of enrollment into the Malawi Government’s Social Cash Transfer Programme.

The Government has been running the programme through which it disburses free cash to ultra-poor and labor constrained households with an aim of boosting their capacity to move forward and attain a considerable level of economic independence.

From 2017 when Twaya started receiving K15000 each month, her road to the dreamed mansion house began opening up. 

"I tasked myself to listen and abide by the advice given by our leaders at Social Cash Transfer. So, I joined a Community Savings and Investment Promotion (COMSIP) group through which I started saving part of my money while using the other chunk to buy food," she said.

Contributor: Sam Majamanda