A Men's Mtaani Chronicle
It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was feeling dangerously
pleased with myself.
That can be risky.
As a habit coach, I have learned that most victories belong
to the client. I am usually just a mirror. The work is theirs. The courage is
theirs. The uncomfortable actions are theirs. Yet on this particular afternoon,
I could not help but act.
I had just come from a coaching session with a client who,
after months of wrestling with himself, was finally beginning to see what the
rest of us had long seen.
Potential.
Not the motivational-speaker version of potential. The
frustrating kind. The kind that sits in plain sight while a person remains
convinced it's not there.
For months, we had worked through limiting beliefs,
difficult questions, habits that quietly sabotaged progress, and stories he had
inherited about himself that no longer served him. And then something shifted.
Not dramatically. Not with fireworks. Not with a life-changing quote suitable
for LinkedIn. Just a quiet realization. A man beginning to believe something
different about himself.
The fog was lifting. The man was changing.
As I went to Mugumoini Market in Langata, I found myself
thinking about how strange transformation really is. Most people assume change
happens when somebody gives you money, an opportunity, or connections. Yet more
often than not, change begins when somebody changes their mind.
At the time, I did not know I was about to spend the
afternoon watching it happen ten more times.
---
The plan seemed simple. Meet Gibson. Meet Martin. Train a
group of young men in personal finance. Spend a few hours sharing what we know.
Go home.
Life, however, has a remarkable ability to laugh at plans.
When we arrived at the social hall, we were greeted by a
giant padlock hanging proudly from the door. Not a small padlock. An imposing
one. The sort that looked like it had been there since Moi was President and
was determined to outlast several administrations. The caretaker was nowhere to
be seen.
Gibson stood nearby, waiting patiently. Now, Gibson is one
of the most patient people I know — the kind of man who can sit quietly as
uncertainty unfolds around him and somehow remain convinced that everything
will work out. I admire this quality because I possess almost none of it.
Eventually, the caretaker appeared. We simply call him Mzee.
He emerged from somewhere deep within the market, wearing the expression of a
man who had made a deliberate decision not to laugh in public because people
might stop taking him seriously.
He looked at me. Looked at the hall. Looked back at me. Then
delivered his verdict.
"Hauku book." Meaning you didn’t book.
I blinked. "But I called!"
He stared at me the way a headmaster stares at a student who
has offered a very creative but deeply unconvincing excuse. Then he walked
away. No explanation. No reassurance. Nothing. He just walked off and began
performing mysterious caretaker tasks behind a nearby vehicle. To this day, I
am not entirely sure what he was doing. I suspect even he wasn't entirely sure.
---
While waiting, I wandered over to the neighboring stall.
Music was blasting from giant speakers. Not music — an assault. The kind of
volume that makes conversation optional and concentration impossible.
I introduced myself and explained our situation. The owner
laughed nervously. Then something clicked — I recognized him. He had attended
our first Men's Group Mtaani session a few months earlier. There he was, still
around, still connected, still willing to help. He promised to lower the volume
when we started. Small victories.
Eventually, the padlock surrendered.
The social hall revealed itself. Now, "hall" might
be slightly generous. This was not KICC. This was not a corporate training
venue with bottled water neatly arranged on tables. It was a simple community
hall — plastic chairs stacked against one wall, concrete floors that had
clearly hosted many meetings and perhaps a few arguments, and windows that
seemed determined to admit both sunlight and dust in equal measure.
Outside, market life continued uninterrupted. Motorbikes
squeezed through impossible spaces. Vegetable vendors haggled loudly. Children
ran around with the limitless energy only children possess.
It was imperfect, which is another way of saying it was
real. Somehow, that felt exactly right, because real transformation rarely
starts in perfect places.
---
The Men's Group Mtaani idea is simple. Many young men are
growing up without older men walking alongside them. Many are the hardest hit
and live in slums. And yes, because nobody cares. Life is busy. People are
struggling, and communities are fragmented. Everyone is trying to survive. So
we decided to show up once a month, one community at a time. No politics. No
promises. No hidden agenda. Just conversation, guidance, stories, and
perspective.
In March, we arrived with what felt like a small battalion
of men. The room was packed — though, in fairness, free food has an
extraordinary ability to boost attendance.
This time was different. No lunch. No fanfare. No
incentives. Just an invitation. Ten young men arrived. Some familiar. Many new.
And strangely enough, I felt relieved. Because these ten had chosen to come. No
one had bribed them with lunch. No one had dragged them there. They wanted
something different. That matters.
---
We began with introductions. The atmosphere felt completely
different from our first visit. Back then, the young men had watched us with
understandable suspicion — why would grown men spend a Saturday afternoon
talking to strangers on Kijiji? What's the catch? Who's running for office?
What are they selling?
One young man asked directly whether we were politicians.
Another seemed convinced there must be a hidden agenda. In fairness, they had
good reason to be suspicious. People often show up in communities promising
transformation when what they really want is attention, photographs, or votes.
But this time, the folded arms had disappeared. The hard
expressions had softened. The room felt lighter. Trust had quietly entered the
conversation.
---
Then Martin stood up.
Now, Martin Wahogo isn't physically imposing in the
conventional sense. He isn't seven feet tall. He doesn't look like he could
wrestle a buffalo. Yet the moment he speaks, people listen—some command
attention through volume. Martin commands attention through conviction. The
first time I met him, he reminded me of Napoleon — compact, focused,
dangerously persuasive—the kind of man who could convince you to charge up a
hill and thank him afterward.
He started with a simple statement. "You cannot manage
what you do not know."
Then he showed us his records. Years of them. Every expense.
Every purchase. Every loan. Every shilling. Even the twenty-shilling njugu.
Especially the twenty-shilling njugu.
The room laughed. But he was serious.
Martin joked that people stopped borrowing money from him
once they realized he kept detailed records. Apparently, accountability is less
appealing than friendship. The young men laughed loudly at that — mostly
because they recognized themselves.
Then Martin did something I did not expect. He pulled out a
simple worksheet. One page. That was it. No projector. No PowerPoint. No
complicated spreadsheet. Just a piece of paper. He called it a personal
financial snapshot. Then he walked us through it — income, expenses, assets,
and liabilities — one section at a time, patiently, almost offensively simply.
And then something beautiful happened. You could see the
lights coming on.
One young man stopped writing halfway through and stared at
the page. Another burst out laughing. A third scratched his head and
recalculated—the room filled with little moments of realization.
"Eeeh." "Aii." "Kumbe..."
The universal sounds of men discovering things they wish
they had known earlier.
One young man looked at his paper, shook his head, and said,
laughing at himself, "I earn money, but if you ask me where it goes, I
honestly don't know." The room erupted — not because it was funny, but
because nearly every man there had committed the same crime.
Another looked over his expenses and said quietly, "So
I've been working all this time, but I don't think I've ever actually looked at
my money."
A third simply looked up and said, "Nobody has ever
explained money to me like this before."
That one landed hard. Because beneath all the laughter was a
realization — most people are blamed for what they do not know long before
anyone takes the time to teach them.
---
What struck me most was that I was learning too.
I still have that worksheet. I refuse to throw it away, not
because it is a masterpiece of financial education — but because it convicted
me. At that moment, I was not facilitating. I was not coaching. I was not
helping anyone. I was sitting there like everyone else, quietly realizing there
were areas of my own financial life that deserved more attention.
Martin then shared a story about a young man he had mentored
years earlier. At the time, he was a mason. Whenever work came, he earned.
Whenever it disappeared, he struggled. Like many people, he believed his
problem was a lack of opportunity.
Martin challenged him. "Your problem isn't opportunity.
Its capacity."
The young man didn't like the answer. Most people don't —
because it puts responsibility back in our hands.
Over time, Martin encouraged him to learn flooring, then
plastering, then ceilings, then steelwork and finally plumbing. A few years
later, he was no longer simply a mason. He had become the person contractors
called when they needed several problems solved at once. His income changed.
His confidence changed. Eventually, his life changed.
Martin smiled. "The money came later. The skills came
first."
You could see several young men sitting differently
afterward. Not because they suddenly had money, but because they suddenly had a
path.
---
The discussion drifted toward discipline: young men and
their first income. Everyone laughed because everyone recognized the pattern —
a young man earns money, feels powerful and independent, then spends it to
prove exactly that.
The problem was never intelligence. The problem was
discipline. And discipline is rarely about knowledge. It is about delaying
gratification long enough for tomorrow to arrive.
That was the real lesson. Not budgeting. Not accounting.
Hope. Responsibility. Agency. The realization that your environment does not
entirely determine your future.
---
We had planned for two hours. The late start ruined that
plan. Nobody seemed to care. Questions continued. Stories continued.
Conversations continued.
When it was finally time to leave, something happened that
stayed with me. The young men did not ask for money or handouts. They asked Martin
to come back. To guide them. To teach them. To walk with them.
That request meant more than they probably realized. It
revealed something important — people do not merely need resources. They need
possibility. They need examples. They need evidence that another future exists.
---
As we packed up, the market had begun to quiet. The
afternoon sunlight stretched across the dusty open spaces between the stalls.
The same social hall that had greeted us with a giant padlock now stood empty,
quiet, ordinary, unremarkable.
And yet I suspect something important happened there. Not a
miracle. Not a breakthrough. Something smaller, perhaps more powerful. A shift.
A new thought. A new possibility. A new story told in ten different ways.
A few hours earlier, I had watched one man begin to see
himself differently. Now I had spent the afternoon watching ten more begin the
same journey.
---
The world celebrates intensity. Big crowds. Big
announcements. Big moments. Yet almost everything meaningful grows through
consistency — a marriage, a business, a habit, a community, a human being. One
conversation. One lesson. One realization. One mind at a time.
And perhaps that is enough.
Because one changed mind can change a family. One changed
family can change a community. One changed community can change a generation.
Sometimes, the power we seek is not found in reaching
thousands. Sometimes it begins in a dusty market hall in Langata, with ten
young men, three volunteers, and the simple belief that people can become more
than they believe themselves to be.
If this message stirred something in you, don’t let it fade.
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