Who Gives You the Audacity?

 

We were a little late to start.

If you've ever organized an event, you'll know that before a room fills with people, it first fills with you. You arrange the chairs, check your notes, and then, for a brief moment, you're alone with your thoughts.

Almost every time, one question quietly walks into the room before anyone else.

"Who gives you the audacity to think people will come to this meeting?"

I've been answering that question for the past year and a half, and it never gets old. Some days I answer it confidently. On other days, I ignore it and keep setting up the room anyway.

This particular afternoon, that familiar question followed me into our Men's Mtaani session.

The venue was a gym in the middle of a market, best described as ramshackle and clad almost entirely in iron sheets. And when I say iron-sheet-clad, I mean a room literally made of iron sheets.

Dust had settled comfortably over every surface. The floor had seen better days. The neighboring structure was generously contributing rap music to our session, loud enough to feel less like background music and more like an uninvited co-facilitator. I briefly considered asking them to turn it down, then remembered we were in a market. The rap music had as much right to be there as we did.

Oddly enough, I felt completely at home.

This was our fifth Men's Mtaani gathering, and as I waited, I found myself remembering the first one.

The reception had been... cautious. Very cautious.

Most of the gentlemen looked at me the way Kenyans instinctively look at someone who suddenly becomes interested in community development a few months before elections. I later learned that many genuinely thought I was campaigning for the local MCA seat.

To make matters worse, they had also been told there would be food available. Since I had made the promise, I honored it and bought everyone a meal.

Unfortunately, people respond remarkably well to incentives.

By the second meeting, the invitation had quietly changed. It was no longer, "There's a discussion about purpose." It had become, "Apparently, there's food." By the third session, I'd had enough. I announced that there would be no meals.

Not because I'd suddenly become mean, but because I wanted to know who was hungry for lunch...and who was hungry for change.

Our numbers never really dropped. Month after month, we've had between twelve and twenty men attend. Not always the same twelve. Certainly not the same twenty. Attendance has been like a game of musical chairs. Some come once and disappear. Others arrive unexpectedly. A faithful few keep returning, and now and then one comes back with a story that reminds you why you started in the first place.

One young man would do exactly that later that afternoon. But let me save that story for a bit later.

As I looked around the room, the chairs were still only partially occupied. My local contact—a young man of deep conviction who believes wholeheartedly in what we're trying to build—had gone out to rally a few more neighbors.

Slowly, people began drifting in.

Spend enough time in informal settlements, and you learn to read a man in seconds. You can tell who still has hope and who has quietly accepted that this is how life will be. Who is hungry to get out and who has stopped asking.

The first gentleman who walked in had a gleam in his eyes. If life gave him a chance, you got the sense he wouldn't waste it. The gentleman beside him carried himself differently. He looked tired. Not physically tired. Life-tired. He seemed disgruntled, but beneath that was the look of someone who had fought a few battles and survived. Someone who had wrestled with alcohol and won, though not cleanly.

I welcomed them both.

We gathered around what could generously be called a table, though in reality it was a stack of exercise steps that had temporarily agreed to serve as furniture. As the men settled in, I wondered what exactly my local contact had told them to persuade them to come.

I've learned that gathering men requires careful language. Invite them to a seminar on self-awareness, and their calendars suddenly become very busy. Mention money, relationships, or purpose. Now you're speaking their language. Whatever he had said, it had worked.

The room was slowly filling. The question that had greeted me at the beginning of the afternoon hadn't disappeared.

"Who gives you the audacity to think people will come?"

But with every chair that filled, it grew just a little quieter.

The Men Who Came

As more men trickled in, the atmosphere slowly began to change. There's a moment in every gathering when a collection of strangers quietly becomes a group. No one announces it. It just happens. Conversations begin. Chairs inch closer together. Someone cracks a joke. Another responds. The room starts to breathe.

Looking around, I couldn't help noticing the contrast among the men sitting around our makeshift tables. On paper, they all lived in the same neighborhood. In reality, they inhabited very different worlds.

Some carried themselves with quiet optimism. Others looked as though life had demanded more of them than it had ever returned. A few were eager to contribute; others sat back, still deciding whether this was another meeting that promised much and delivered little.

Trust, especially in communities that have been disappointed more than once, is never given cheaply. It is earned—one conversation at a time. One kept promise at a time. We soon found ourselves talking about relationships, not because it was on my agenda, but because that's where the room wanted to go.

I've learned over the years that facilitation is a bit like sailing. You may know your destination, but if you ignore the wind you'll spend the whole day fighting it instead of moving forward.

So my carefully prepared agenda quietly went out the window. The room had spoken. The conversation turned to something many of the men knew intimately. Broken relationships. Homes held together by endurance rather than joy. Children growing up watching conflict become normal. The family fabric that so many of us long for yet struggle to preserve.

One gentleman spoke openly about the breakdown of a marriage that had lasted for many years. There was no bitterness in his voice, only the exhaustion of someone trying to understand how two people who once promised forever could become strangers.

Beside him sat a gentleman whose marriage had lasted almost as long. His story couldn't have been more different. He spoke warmly about his wife, partnership, and choosing one another even when life became difficult.

Same city. Similar stage of life. Almost the same number of years married. Two men who had started from roughly the same place had arrived at completely different destinations.

As more men arrived and joined the conversation, different perspectives emerged. Some spoke from disappointment. Others from hope. Some were trying to rebuild, while others were trying to protect what they already had. Nobody claimed to have all the answers.

But everyone had a story.

As the facilitator, I'd arrived expecting to guide the discussion. Instead, the discussion was gently guiding me. I'd spent hours preparing discussion points. The men had arrived carrying something far more important.

Their lives.

Now and then, I'd glance at my notes, almost apologetically. They seemed to be looking back at me, saying, "We had plans today." I silently replied, "Not anymore."

Some of the best coaching sessions I've ever been part of have started exactly this way. You prepare the agenda. People bring the real agenda. The room was no longer waiting for content. It was responding to connection.

By now we had squeezed ourselves a little closer around two improvised tables. Nobody seemed particularly bothered by the lack of comfort. Purpose has a funny way of making people forget inconvenience.

Outside, life carried on exactly as it always had. The rap music next door kept playing its unsolicited soundtrack. Someone shouted across the market. Metal doors banged open and shut. In the distance, motorbikes squeezed through impossibly narrow spaces.

Yet inside that iron-sheet gym, something entirely different was unfolding. A handful of men were doing something we rarely permit ourselves to do. They were talking honestly, not performing, not competing, not pretending. Just talking.

Little did we know the afternoon was about to take a turn none of us had planned. In true market fashion, our next two visitors hadn't come looking for coaching at all.

The Wrong Meeting

As often happens in markets, life carried on around us whether we were ready or not. Our discussion had settled into a rhythm when two drunk men wandered into the meeting. The first entered confidently, with his friend trailing behind, looking considerably worse for wear. Between the two of them, sobriety had clearly taken the afternoon off.

Now, this is one of those moments that reminds me why I believe I'm walking in purpose. If I'm being honest, my first instinct wasn't compassion. It was order. Every facilitator secretly imagines the perfect meeting. People arrive on time, sit politely, contribute thoughtfully, and nobody interrupts.

Reality, however, has a wonderful sense of humor. The first gentleman quietly took a seat. He has since become one of our most regular visitors. I still don't know what keeps bringing him back, but he does.

He listened as the men shared their experiences with relationships, disappointment, and rebuilding their lives. Then, out of nowhere, he interrupted. "Why haven't we started the purpose of this meeting?" For a brief moment, I felt defensive. Deep down, I was thinking, "What do you mean? This is the meeting."

People were opening up. Walls were coming down. Surely this was exactly why we had gathered. A few minutes later, he asked the same question again. This time, I decided to ask him one of my own. "What do you think the purpose of today's meeting is?" Without missing a beat, he replied, "This is the MCA meeting where they're giving people money."

For a few seconds, the room went completely silent. Then every one of us turned toward him. "My brother..." "You're in the wrong meeting." Apparently, the meeting he was looking for was a few structures down the road.

He looked around the room once more, realized nobody seemed interested in collecting allowances, apologized rather sheepishly, and quietly walked out. As he disappeared into the market, I couldn't help but smile. He had come looking for money. Instead, he had accidentally walked into a room where men were trying to make sense of their lives.

His friend stayed behind. Unlike the first gentleman, this wasn't simply a case of mistaken venue. He carefully placed a bundle of hospital papers on our makeshift table and began explaining his situation. His wife had left. He was struggling and needed help paying his medical bills. Mind you, he was speaking in fluent drunk.

Every question we asked somehow circled back to the same painful story. There was no doubt in my mind that parts of what he was saying were true. Pain has a way of revealing itself, even through alcohol.

Eventually, one of the gentlemen asked him a simple question. "If we gave you money today, where would it go?" The room became very quiet. Nobody answered. Nobody needed to. Everyone there knew him. Everyone exchanged the same glance. The nearest drinking spot wasn't very far away. I genuinely felt for him. I still do.

Helping someone isn't always the same as giving them money. Sometimes the two are completely different things. I wish I had the capacity to help everyone who crosses my path. The truth is, I don't. I'm learning that I can help some people, but not everyone.

The ones I can help are usually those who genuinely want change and are willing to move toward it. That lesson hasn't made me less compassionate. If anything, it has made me more intentional.

As he gathered his papers and left, I silently hoped someone better equipped than I was would come alongside him. Because beneath the alcohol... beneath the disappointment... beneath the excuses... was still a man carrying more pain than most of us could see.

For a few moments the room became quiet. Nobody rushed to fill the silence. Sometimes silence does its own kind of coaching. Then my local contact shared a story about grit and survival.

And just as he was finishing, the person we'd all been waiting for finally arrived.

Martin Wahogo.

Without knowing it, the afternoon was about to move from conversation to action.

The Game That Changed the Room

I've worked with Martin over the past three months, and one thing I've come to appreciate about him is that he is rarely driven by anything other than a genuine desire to help. In every session, he has taken the men through practical lessons on money—grounded, simple, and immediately applicable. No complicated theories. Just habits.

One piece of advice he had given us in an earlier session had stayed with me.

"Write down a record of everything you spend every day for one month."

Simple. Almost too simple. I've heard that advice before and tried it at different points in my life, each time with a different mindset. Yet the outcome was always the same.

By about Day Ten, I was thoroughly disgruntled by what I was seeing. The notebook had become painfully candid. Nobody had to lecture me about my spending. My own handwriting was doing that quite effectively. Without even trying, I began changing my habits.

That afternoon, Martin reminded the group about the exercise, and a young man quietly raised his hand. I recognized him immediately. He had attended one of our earlier Men's Mtaani sessions, gone home, and actually completed the assignment. Every expense. Every day.

When he reviewed what he'd spent, he was shocked by how much money had quietly slipped through his fingers, so he decided to start saving instead.

As we sat there, he proudly showed me how much he had saved in just two months. I had to look twice. It was comfortably in the upper five figures. Mind you, these are the same young men who will honestly tell you they're broke and struggling.

Life is difficult. Jobs are scarce. Money is tight. All of that is true.

But sometimes the problem isn't only how much we earn. Sometimes it's how quietly money leaves without ever announcing itself. That young man's story, in part, answered the question I'd asked myself at the beginning of the afternoon.

"Who gives you the audacity to believe people will come?"

Perhaps moments like this do.

Then Martin introduced the reason we'd all gathered that day. A game. Cashflow, created by Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. His first question was simple. "How many of you have played Cashflow?"

Very few hands went up. Then he asked, "How many of you have played Monopoly?" Again... Almost complete silence. Apart from Gibson—our resident team-building trainer—and me, almost nobody had ever played it.

Martin looked genuinely surprised. We quickly reminded him that most of the men in the room hadn't grown up in homes where board games were part of childhood. What feels completely normal to one person can be entirely unfamiliar to another.

Without missing a beat, Martin adapted. Standing in front of the dusty mirror at the gym, he explained four quadrants.  Employee. Self-employed. Business owner. Investor.

He explained each one in language everyone could relate to. The employee earns a salary. The self-employed person, or hustler, creates work every day—but if they stop working, the income stops too. The business owner builds something that can continue generating income beyond their own effort. And the investor lets money work for them.

As he spoke, I could see the room growing more animated. Many of the men worked for business owners. Very few had ever imagined becoming one. Then we started playing.

Each of us became someone different. Doctors. Lawyers. Janitors. Drivers. We earned salaries, paid bills, made investments, celebrated good decisions, and laughed at terrible ones. Every now and then, someone had a child, and the whole room erupted in cheers.

For several hours, the iron-sheet gym was filled with something I hadn't expected. Not just laughter. Possibility. For a little while, the men weren't thinking about the bills waiting at home, difficult relationships or yesterday's disappointments.

They were thinking about tomorrow. And that, quietly, was answer enough.

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