Espoir Kahitani

Biography

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.

Featured Poems

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

Biography collected and written by Lisa Gilman