Charles Lipanda Matenga is a poet and activist whose poems have been published in the anthology ‘Our Voices Are Gathering’ in 2023 and ‘Being A Refugee Wasn’t A Choice’ due out later this year.
Our flag is dying for you have failed to protect your mother Congo. You brought war instead of peace. When will you stop grinding and crushing us? We are spice in the mortar. How long these bloodshed be swimming eternal? We are refugees with no shelters. The rhythm of hymns sang by souls. For the guns, guns, guns have been killing us.
He’s one of the founders of AYAP (African Youth Artistic Poetry) which now has over forty members and has built a thriving poetry and spoken word community in Dzaleka.
Ruth Takondwa, another member of AYAP, is a poet and advocate for gender equality and refugee rights in Dzaleka. She reads ‘A Hopeless Girl’, ‘A Woman In Esther’:
A girl in Esther, she has been useless for so long. Seeing her with a bag on her back, laughing at her, that she’s wasting her time for. But see now she’s opening evils and poverty doors. She’s walking above the ground. Even the wind is afraid to attack. See, she’s empowering the girls making word honey for girls.
Now she’s very fantastic.
Firstborn, poet and activist, was selected to be part of the Global Young Influencers group in Malawi. He’s got a unique style, influenced by the Caribbean poet EA Prince, and he reads two pieces, including ‘Is It A Case?’:
Africa, save your tomorrow’s generation. Build peace in your neighbor’s mansion. Escape the white colonization. Save our mother Congo. Today, it’s us. Tomorrow might be anyone.
Keep up to date with AYAP (African Youth Artistic Poetry) and all their new writings too. Including the anthology, ‘Being A Refugee Wasn’t A Choice’ which is being published later this year.
Next week I’ve another episode with more poets from Dzaleka – Kenny Mujago, Mirielle Abedi, Harry Rama and Eagle, – so stay tuned for that.
Again huge thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding and support.
Listen to my recent BBC World Service documentary from Dzaleka – Tumaini.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Bairbre Flood: Hi and welcome back to Wander with me, Bairbre Flood, supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, and this episode with members of the African Youth Artistic Poetry Group in Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi.
A huge shout out to Kenny Mujago for all his work coordinating these recordings. I met Kenny when I was in Malawi making a documentary for the BBC World Service last year. The documentary is called Tumaini, which means hope in Swahili, and it’s about a music and arts festival in Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi.
Kenny was one of the many community volunteers and organisers of the festival. It’s an amazing festival that relies on the skill, teamwork and organisation of so many people. And if you haven’t already listened to it, it’s up on the BBC World Service. Just search for Tumaini and my name, Bairbre Flood.
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[00:00:49] Charles Lipanda: It is our duty as poets to raise voices over the world.
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[00:00:55] Bairbre Flood: Charles Lipanda Motenga is a poet and activist living in Dzaleka. His poems have been published in the anthology Our Voices Are Gathering in 2023 and Being a Refugee Wasn’t a Choice. He’s one of the founders of AYAP, African Youth Artistic Poetry, which now has over 40 members and has built a thriving poetry and spoken word community in Dzaleka.
This is Charles Lipanda Matenga.
[00:01:25] Charles Lipanda: I’m one of the founders and president of African Youth Artistic Poetry. This is the poetry organization which is founded in Malawi. Just to promote young girls and boys or children to be having ambitions.
You know, you can be living somewhere like this arid place. I mean, it’s like a refugee camp. It’s not a safe place.
So we offer lessons to young people. We teach them poetry. And I find that it’s a really good dream that never fails to come true.
The poem I’m going to recite is a poem that I once performed on United Nations Day in the capital city of Malawi and also National Youth Policy.
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I am a poet with no pen and paper. Words ripple on lips like soft weeds. Valiant voice rustles me to speak for the orphans whose blood flows with the viscosity of the fleets. Our flag is dying for you have failed to protect your mother Congo. You brought war instead of peace. When will you stop grinding and crushing us?
We are spice in the mortar. How long these bloodshed be swimming eternal? We are refugees with no shelters. The rhythm of hymns sang by souls. For the guns, guns, guns have been killing us. A wave of nostalgia, ringing, reflecting, appealing. When I did, parents were alive, who’d sleep on a mat for no night.
I don’t want war. I want peace. We want peace. We want a world of peace. I smell the scent of petunia of grace, for a bar is erratic and all united, for being penurious on the waves of the sea.
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Charles Lipanda: So the poem that I just performed is about peace. In Africa, there are a lot of things that are going wrong. That’s why I quoted yesterday, like, the world is too noisy that ears can’t even hear what is inside. So people are dying each and every day. But it is our duty. It is our duty as poets to raise voices over the world so that people can see his words and bring peace.
The only thing I would just like to add, just as I said, I’m a student because I do believe that talent is not enough because I also quoted like, education is the only way to escape poverty striking and low living standards. So as the, as, as young people here in Dzaleka Refugee Camp. We all believe that education is so scarcely defined.
Then if you find, like, you finish, like, as myself, I’m on grade 12 now, I’ll be writing my final exams of secondary school, and then I’ll be hoping to go to university. So if I get education, I can still make more things than I have ever done at this young age. And also help the community. Yeah, to help the community.
[00:04:41] Bairbre Flood: That was Charles Lipanda Matenga, poet, writer, and founder of AYAP.
Next up is Ruth Takandwa, another of the members of AYAP.
[00:04:51] Ruth Takondwa: The title is entitled, A Hopeless Girl. Yeah, here it goes.
I am her, she’s me. I feel her, she feels me. I mean, we are one. But to be born is a crime. What about to be born as a girl child? Our breasts, you have changed them into toys. Our vaginas, you have changed them into shoes. See that you’re wearing us, using us every time, sexing us every time.
How do you feel if you do such so? Why can’t you imagine if you could be you? Would you allow me to do such thing you do? How would you feel? Why doesn’t you have humanity? How do you feel if you destroy somebody’s life? See? A five year old girl child, she knows nothing, but you ate her like a lion, eating her body parts like a leopard without fear.
You see, you came to me as well, treating me as an animal without even mercy for me. How do you feel if you do such a thing? At least if you could know our missions, visions, and ambitions, maybe you couldn’t have done this.
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Ruth Takondwa: If I do write something that is reality, that is coming deeply from my heart, then Whenever, like, I feel sad, then I just write down, then you find I have composed a poem in such thing. Then I, I feel that in my heart, then I’m feeling okay, just because I’ve erased out everything that I had inside my heart.
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A girl in Esther, she has been useless for so long. Seeing her with a bag on her back, laughing at her, that she’s wasting her time for nothing robbery. But see now she’s opening evils and poverty dose. She’s walking above the ground. Even the wind is afraid to attack. See, she’s empowering the girls making word honey for girls.
Now she’s very fantastic.
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Ruth Takondwa: But I do also like write some poems in our one language in the region.
My past when I came in the world, love disappeared. Thes and evils appeared. I was, nobody
was, became my enemy, was my first name. Brand man was my second name. I was a dog with no home. Whatever could possibly throw me off stones, I was used it like a boy’s toilet, living in the mind of a foolish person who never wished to see his future. If I ask you, would you say that I too was a human being, or else I too was an animal?
If I remember my past, I do cry a little because I suffered much.
But only God knows who I will be and who I am.
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[00:07:47] Bairbre Flood: That was Ruth Takandwa. A huge thank you to Ruth for sharing her poetry and insights with us.
And finally for today, we have Firstborn. Another poet with AAP, who was selected to be part of the Global Young Influencers group in Malawi. He’s got a unique style, influenced by the Caribbean poet, Ye Prince, and he’ll tell us more about that later on. This is First Born.
[00:08:11] FirstBorn: So run, cheap twins of Mama Africa, before the gang chooses and break down your bones. The gun, the gun, the gun that killed our fathers, the same that killed our mothers, and the same is still killing our relatives before humanity, reality, equality. Our souls, we are liners before humanity, reality, equality.
Our tongues, our voices, the way we spoke, we are users, and because of the gun, we run and run and run, see. Africa, my sweetheart. Africa, my dear mom. Africa, my honey. I never thought you could give me this name, refugee. I never thought you could bury my vision. I buried them in the grave at the sight of the gun.
I trembled, frightened, and cold. I fell at the sight of the guns. Quack, quack, and quack. I thought of many that died before. Man’s life is brief, I thought. I can imagine dead people singing prayers for salvation day by day in nature’s fate to be peaceful paradise I live for me darkness, see the loose hope, queer people trying to kill my dreams and my vision I, I’m having a difficult introduction, the song of sorrow is my rhythm The bullet as their strings, the guns as their gear I pluck it, the scandal, the meninde and crescendo Then I see a lighting mental out holding the tear of the victim and without sympathy They pluck it again, my blood pours Vanishes as a rocket in their way.
So I bury my soul and hope to be woke up one day. Living as then, hearing as then, seeing as blind. Much more I was walking to, disaster passing through. And at the end, my freedom pulled me back. My life being left on my back. So I wonder what the cost for freedom. I have to offer my blood to gain my independence.
So I have to offer my blood to gain my independence. Mama Africa, dear eternal mind, that together we shall stand. Turn, divide, we shall fall, all for one and one for all, united, not cold.
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FirstBorn: Almost all my poems, I always talk about different situations that people are going through, like different situations, like refugees, that people that are facing wars are going through. So I find myself writing these different poems that express different pains and struggles that people, human beings are going through.
Okay. Different people inspires me, both inside the camp or sometimes also outside the camp. I have some two to three inspiration who inspires me outside the camp. E. A. Prince. He’s a black American poet who also inspires me a lot. He’s a spoken word artist who when, when he’s performing his usual, you know, he expresses things without fear of anything.
So I just find myself being inspired by him because he also talks about different situations that the world is facing in general. This other one that I’m reciting I wrote it you know, there’s war, war in DRC in Congo. So there’s this war, which a lot of people are dying day by day. So I write it.
As, as one, like, feeling the pain of those people who are dying in the DRC.
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FirstBorn: So it is, it is entitled, ‘Is It A Case?’
From zero to hero, we stand. The love of my heart is aspiring. All those who claim to love her, betraying her. Peaceful arguments are left in lost papers. Rappers are waked up while readers are all in vapors. Our tears being published in newspapers, all across the globe. Getting likes and sort of comments, but still getting no help.
Thank you. It is time to change, time to help. Africa, wake up and witness the serene state of your brothers and sisters. The embracements faced by our mothers being wastefully raped without any fear for our sisters cases. We are left with no option. Sleeping with our brother and mother just to save their lives, killing our sisters to keep their virginity.
It’s sad. But death is the food that we are all forced to eat. Imagine drinking blood instead of water, seeing our dead father’s body and being forced to eat their meat, praying for death instead of life. Dear God, please take us. Please. Help. We don’t remember the last day sleeping, the last day, eating like people are not hippos.
This is no longer the earth in the solar system By hell. In the God with space. Where is the promised heaven? Why is the God not helping? Is it the same spirit of humanism? I call it satanism. I don’t know if I have to regret this. You think you are qua by killing your brothers? You find it funny by seeing dead bodies.
With this innocent spirit increase your immortality. Why misusing your abilities? Oh, I forgot that Africans never practiced democracy. We are still trapped, paying unknown mistakes. They say our sisters did it, but then why is it still following us? Was it a mistake? Africa, save your tomorrow’s generation.
Build peace in your neighbor’s mansion. Escape the white colonization. Save our mother Congo. Today, it’s us. Tomorrow might be anyone. So please help to save our brothers and sisters.
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[00:16:20] Bairbre Flood: A huge thanks to Firstborn, and to Ruth Takondwa and Charles Lipanda Matenga, who you heard earlier in the programme. I’ll put a link in the show notes and you can keep up to date with AYAP, African Youth Artistic Poetry, and all their new writings too. Including the anthology, Being a Refugee Wasn’t a Choice, which is being published later this year.
Next week I have another episode with poets from Dzaleka, with Kenny Mujago, Mirelle Abede, Harry Rama and Eagle. So stay tuned for that.
Again, a huge thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding and support. And thank you for listening. From me, Bairbre Flood, bye for now.
