Behind Toi Market, a small structure made of iron sheets and patched gunia sacks stands quietly between two harsh worlds. On one side, a dirty river carries waste and the city’s neglect. On the other, a dumpsite burns and decays in silence. Between them, more than twenty men have built what they call home.
Inside, space is barely space. Men sleep shoulder to shoulder, cook in turns and wash when water allows. There is no privacy, only negotiation. Yet within this overcrowded shelter, life continues with a strange order, carefully maintained routines that make survival possible in a place that offers very little dignity.
We met Anto, one of the men who lives here. He speaks with calm clarity, his voice steady despite the weight of where he is. He is extremely eloquent despite his looks. He does not present himself as a victim, nor does he try to soften the truth of his situation. Instead, he names it plainly.
“People think we are just idle,” he says quietly. “But every day here is work. Every day is survival. If you don’t move, you don’t eat.”
He pauses, looking around the crowded room where others listen in silence. Then he adds, almost as if correcting a misunderstanding the world has long held about them, “We are not lazy. We are surviving. There is a difference.”
Around him are men whose paths did not end here by choice. Some lost jobs that once sustained families. Others left rural homes chasing opportunities that never came. Some simply ran out of options in a city that moves faster than their ability to hold on.
“Everyone here has a story,” Anto says. “Nobody planned to end up here. Life just happens fast.”
Behind the structure, where the ground meets uneven soil and discarded waste, the men have created something unexpected. A small, improvised space where life is still being nurtured. Rabbits sit quietly in makeshift cages. Ducks move in restless circles. Dogs linger nearby, familiar with the rhythm of the place.
It is not abundance, but it is care. In a place defined by lack, they have still found a way to keep something alive that depends on them. The animals become part of their routine; fed, watched over and spoken about with a familiarity that softens the harshness of everything else around them.
Even here, responsibility has not disappeared. It has simply taken another form.
Standing at the edge of the river, Anto looks out at the water carrying debris past their shelter. He does not raise his voice. He does not dramatize his condition. Instead, he speaks with a quiet acceptance that feels heavier than complaint.
“This place is not easy,” he says. “But where do you go when you have nowhere else?”
There is no immediate answer to that question. Only the sound of movement inside the iron-sheet structure, the distant hum of the city and the unspoken understanding that this part of Nairobi exists just beside everyday life, unseen but very real.
As conversations around men’s mental health continue across the world, places like this complicate them. Because here, struggle is not an idea or a statistic, it is waking up without certainty, living without stability and still finding ways to carry on.
And perhaps what stays longest is not just the difficulty of their lives, but the quiet persistence within them. The fact that even in a place like this, something is still being cared for, still being built, still being held together by men the city rarely stops to see.
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