By Joanna Woźniczko (Gazeta Wyborcza)
He fled Cameroon to Ghana, and from Ghana to Warsaw. Now he feels that here is his home. In Warsaw he founded a Magazine for exiles. Yesterday ‘Voice of Exile’ celebrated its jubilee:
Simon Mol came with a black leather file during our meeting. With a mysterious smile he opened it and pulled out an African newspaper: printed on scratchy paper. This opposition newspaper caused him to be thrown behind the bars; “Before my arrest I was working as a journalist. I was writing for a pro-government newspaper in order to win my bread and at the same time I also wrote for an opposition newspaper. Not long afterwards I was handed an ultimatum; you either abandon the opposition newspaper or you get banned from practicing journalism. I decided to carry on with the opposition newspaper,” Simon narrates.
Afterwards he was detained. He was finally saved by the Canadian embassy and the International PEN (Poets Essayists and Novelists) Club. He ended up in Warsaw. In his initial encounter with the capital he recalls with a smile that it was too cold for him, in spite of the fact that he came in July;- “Initially as a guest of PEN I stayed in a 5-star hotel. Later I moved to a students’ hostel. Finally I landed at a refugee center. For six-years now I am struggling to takeoff again,” he says.
Today Simon Mol is an institutional person; secretary general of the Association of Exiles in Poland, founder and director of the aliens theatre group Migrator Theatre, author of all the four plays which the group is currently performing and the editor in chief of Voice of Exile Magazine. Precisely the bilingual magazine celebrated its jubilee yesterday.
“More Poles read the magazine than foreigners,” Simon discloses, “It is a practical medium to know about foreigners/refugees as they present their view points here. And of course the stories are incredibly exciting, which the authors have lived through.” However the magazine is most importantly for aliens/refugees: in it one can get closer to the experiences of others and also find the addresses of useful organizations.
About 2000 recognised refugees live in Warsaw. Majority of them are from Chechnya and Africa. The Jubilee of Voice of Exile was held yesterday in Café Casablanca. The event was highlighted by the reading of the script of the play, ‘Race of Stamps’, (the latest play of Migrator Theatre), promotion of the latest issue of Voice of Exile and a great applause for Simon Mol.
This article originally appeared in the Polish Language newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza
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