A TALENTED, young refugee living in Franschhoek, James Jamala Safari (22), has published an anthology of poems and will read them at the restaurant Topsi & Co in Franschhoek during the Bastille Festival (11-13 July).
James is a French and Swahili speaker who has written poems in English only a few years after arriving in South Africa as a refugee from war-torn South Kivu in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He is one of a group of grassroots poets in the Franschhoek Valley who started meeting with mentor Bill Morris to discuss their work, a creative endeavour that came to light shortly before the first Franschhoek Literary Festival in May last year.
James wrote, asking for the opportunity to perform some of his poems: “This chance can be a breakthrough from the silence that has detained me from my dream art.”
He was born and schooled in Bukavu, where he performed poetry in numerous Sunday school productions. He wrote his first poems at the age of 14, dedicated to peace because his country was (and still is) in turmoil.
In Grade 10, he and some school friends formed the Venus Club, a theatre club that performed drama, poetry, traditional and modern music in different venues.
When he went on to university to study Environmental Management, he helped to form the Albatros Club which put on environmental theatre productions for which he composed poems, songs and sketches.
The Safari family has many sons who were vulnerable to conscription in the army, and it was sadly decided that James and his brother Dia should abandon their university studies and leave the country.
He writes: “After experiencing deeply the atrocities of wars in Kivu, I ended up in South Africa where even though hundreds of thousands of miles away from my homeland, I suffered the consequences of these dreadful moments of my life in severe sicknesses and horrible memories of wars.
“Lifeless and hopeless I was as I arrived in this strange land, but now I hold on to a new branch of life where I can construct my future.
“It is up to me to make the best of it, joyful or painful as my life’s journey will be.
“These poems bring close my tears, worries, happiness and hopes to the people who will read them. This is my opened heart.”
He has now resumed his studies at the University of the Western Cape.
* To book for a French dinner with poetry readings on Friday 11 July (19:30), Saturday 12 July (13:00 and 19:30) or Sunday 13 July (13:00), phone Topsi & Co on 021-876-2952.
