Espoir Kahitani
16 years old
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Biography by Angela Bizera
Photo by unknown

Espoir the Legend Trov Kahitari is a young man from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is just 16 years old. He came to Malawi in the year 2014, and is currently a student.

His story started in the present, without knowing the past. He was very young when he first came to Malawi. His family fled their home country due to danger, and he does not know how or through where they traveled. Malawi is a good country, and secure, with no guns to fear. Despite this, there is hunger in the (Dzaleka refugee) camp, and Espoir constantly worries what will happen if the World Food Programme (WFP) stops providing them with food. He likes Dzaleka because it is full of many talents, and he discovered a lot of art here.

He likes art. He does it for life, not for money. But in the future he hopes to do both. Poetry helps him to deal with a lot of life, and that is why he writes. He started his poetry at the White Future Center, where he was learning English. At the Center they pushed him and directed him to the Branches group that fostered his talent after failing in a poetry competition in 2018.

His poem “Am Not Yet in Love” is about how human beings behave in the world. It is a romantic poem. He is already romantic, but he doesn’t know if love is. He just imagines it’s like it is in Bollywood movies.

He would like to tell the readers that, “before you knew him as the man that you have been looking for, he had a special status.” These are the words he always uses.

THE MAN THAT YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR

So I am the man that you have been looking for
My name is Espoir Kahitani , you can call me HP
It is said that I wasn’t born when the sun was shining
But I was born when the moon and the stars were summoned
together to witness my way, coming back to the world
It is said that I wasn’t born when the planets were rotating
But I was born when the stars were sleeping, dreaming of my way
Coming back to the world
Now here is the song of sorrow that I wanna sing with you guys

They say that some blacks were born with a golden spoon
I wonder if mine was a golden spoon or a wooden spoon
We were born blacks, with black, broken, blood-spoons
Born with our souls stuck in those black-breaking homes
And the question that I can ask

IS BEING BORN A BLACK A BLESSING OR IS BEING BORN A BLACK A CURSE
DO I MEAN POOR FAMILIES AND BLACK REFUGEES WHEN I AM PAUSING WITH A PHRASE?

This song makes me cry, this song makes me cry
It is reminding me of the lovers we lost, the beautiful girls
we loved the most
Now corpses and carcasses in the mortuaries and sanctuaries
flash their memories by plucking their guitar base
While the young ladies with the genocide face tease their fingers’ veins
Upon grasping their wounds against their fathers’ mosaics
The gun that killed their fathers, the same killed their mothers

In the past, the lovers who loved her are lovers she loved the most
Her beauty was the strong pill joining my broken bones
And running to the passages that impulses use to cock my


MEDULLA OBLONGATA (Poem 2)

See, Africa loved her lovers, and we loved her the most
Regardless of the impoverished life that we’ve been having, the rest
My previous Africa loved my feet and always used to give me a seat
Whenever the sweat ran down my cheeks
See, inside my home-mama-Africa
I never thought that one day this Africa will betray me and give me
this name, Refuge
In the past, the lovers who loved her are lovers she loved the most

If you’ll travel back to the past-time Africa
You’ll find me satisfied with my BUGALI SOMBE NGAINGAI
with my culture as KASAI, MASAI, and I
Traveling to all the different places of my heart

This name, Refugee, could not exist
This name, Refugee, was none of my wishes, deep in me
Is the sorrowful song that I am singing, and why I see
Are the pasha pasha dreams that I am dreaming, when I look in the past, I see
Those black men and black women dancing kwasakwasa
It reminds me of my paradise, lost-mama-Africa

See we are called Refugees for these black bombs and bullets
Blackening our paces
Curses and calamities’ drawings on our faces
Born in the time when inside our black men and black women’s
bodies are shouts of peace
Pangas painting blood and black, black histories creeping in between
our black, black souls
See, we are tired, we are failing to keep quiet
For the KA KA KA KA KA KA, the sound of a gun
After KA KA KA KA KA KA, our lives are done