From the day they can walk, boys in Kibera are told the same thing: be strong, do not cry, sort it out yourself. By the time they are young men, most have learned the lesson too well. They carry job rejections, family pressure, grief and fear entirely alone, and it comes out sideways, as anger, drinking, silence, or disappearing from the people who love them.

We see it in who walks through our door. Young women come to talk. Young men come late, if at all, and often only after something has gone badly wrong. It is not that they hurt less. It is that nobody ever showed them that talking was an option.

So we make the option obvious. When young men do come to a Safe Talk Space, the first sessions are often mostly football and jokes. That is fine. Trust comes before truth, and it comes slowly. By the fourth or fifth week someone says the real thing, and the room finds out that nobody laughs.

What young men tell us afterwards is simple. They did not know other guys felt the same. They thought they were the only one failing. They had never been asked how they were and been given time to answer.

Strength is not silence. Strength is dealing with what is heavy before it breaks you or someone else.

If you are a young man in Kibera who has been carrying something alone, come and sit with us. No forms, no speeches. Just a room where you can say it. Write to info@kibrayouthnetwork.org.