This sentence, which was once the source of my daily motivation, became the basis of my frustration and sleepless nights.

The people around me observe me with amazement, surprised to see how much I look like my father. For the most curious of them, the question "Are you the son of pharmacist Edouard" began our conversations, replacing the "Hello! How are you?" and flouting out politeness. They might have surmised that this blatant resemblance to my father could only mean that I too aspired to one day become a pharmacist like my father. 

It always filled me with fury and frustration whenever people compared me to him, asking me in a dismissive tone "why don't you want to become a pharmacist?” Everytime I hear that question, I remain silent, allowing them to narrate my dad’s qualities that they believed I possessed. 

Languages fascinate me and even more so computer languages. These languages with numbers, letters, and special characters known to scare people fascinate me, challenge my ability to understand the complexity of simple items and excite my competitive spirit, and allow me to defy those around me who could only demotivate me. I find in them a beauty comparable to mine, the ones that no one perceived. 

My passion for languages and the world began from a very young age when I first started to fill out numerous visa applications to travel to the unknown and satisfy the curious explorer in me. I was getting ready to make the biggest trip of my life, taking in my little black suitcase, covered with pictures of all the places I wanted to discover - the pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal, all these places as fascinating as each other. At dawn, I stood in front of my mother,  dressed in my Sunday best and holding my father's passport in my hand, expecting to fool the airport officials because I looked just like him - the only problem was my short stature, but that was not an issue, I could always say I was shrinking, that's all! 

My mother stared at me for a long time with a smile on her face, her head tilting from left to right, as she closed her eyes and gently laughed. The smile that stretched to my ears vanished along with my dreams of one day seeing the world. 

"I am proud of you!" my father exclaimed when my national committee informed him of my scholarship to attend a United World College, a school crowded with various people, but with whom I had to converse in English, a language I had just learned to speak. Sometimes, I forgot to express myself in English, reacting with an "Eh, Pardonne moi!" of my francophone accent, eventually establishing confusion and laughter. Despite all of this I was able to blossom, fulfilling one of my dreams and making my parents proud, becoming “the model child”, the one who achieves the impossible and shows no signs of giving up. 

If only they knew... The heavy weight I carried everyday, the cries of my body seeking for help because it couldn't take the pressure anymore. How I woke up every morning at dawn. How I walked for hours in the dusty streets and hot sun of Kinshasa in search of electricity and data. How traumatized I was from my abrupt return home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

My dad wasn't there so he didn't need to know! He would have taken it the wrong way, believing his “child prodigy” was just a coward, giving up when facing adversity. My parents’ validation mattered to me, but what I thought of myself outweighed it.  I wasn't ready to give up on my dreams once again!

In the end, am I not an Esambu?