President Faure receives ‘Refugee’ author Flavien Joubert |18 December 2019
Mr Joubert presents President Faure with a copy of his latest book (Photo: Joena Meme)
Author Flavien Joubert presented one of his recent works titled ‘Refugee, a Seychellois Boy’s Story’, to President Danny Faure at State House yesterday morning.
The book, the fourth of his written collections and a departure from the culinary and cocktail aspects, is a true experience story of Mr Joubert as a young 16-year-old boy on scholarship training in Cyprus but who ended up a being a refugee for three months during the war that happened there in 1974.
The book talks about his personal experience of internship in a refugee camp and the way out and was written to motivate aspiring students for overseas training to overcome challenges that they may face away from home.
“In the reality of this world such eventuality may happen wherever one maybe and this book, through my experience, will give you guidance on how to overcome this type of situation and President Faure is very happy with the release of this book which will motivate the young and other people as well to overcome such challenges in the event of being caught up as a refugee,” Mr Joubert said.
Mr Joubert, who is also the principal of the Seychelles Tourism Academy (STA), said that he had been living with the refugee experience for so many years, waiting for the right moment to tell the story.
He said that he has omitted all atrocities that happened during his experience as a refugee but one has to read the book to understand why they were omitted.
Apart from presenting a copy to President Faure, Mr Joubert has also presented copies of the book to the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development, Ministry of Culture, educational institutions and youth organisations and some other individuals.
The book, which was published in Mauritius, was put together with the assistance of author and former principal of the International School, Martin Kennedy.
“The book is a gift for the young people of Seychelles,” Mr Joubert said, noting that there are a lot of pedagogical lessons to be learned by the youngsters.
He said that he is working on two other books, including one for children, with the possibility of one to be published in 2020.