A Chameleon's Tale: True Stories of a
Global Refugee
Book Launch and Readings By Mo Tejani
Having
lived and worked in four continents
of our planet, Mohezin (Mo) Tejani has been a global nomad all his
life. Though
born in Tanzania to
Indian
parents, Mo called Uganda
his home for the first 18 formative years. Along with 80,000 other
Asians
forced to flee Idi Amin’s reign of terror in Uganda, Mo fled as a
refugee,
first to England (the colonial motherland) and then to America of the
late
Sixties and early Seventies. While educating himself with degrees in
Literature
and Creative Writing, he won the Avery Hopwood Award for poetry and
taught
English and literature in California,
and
upstate New York.
During summers, Mo hitchhiked all over North
America
to learn about his new life from the open road. Trekking through the
desert
Badlands of Utah, cooking up trout curries next to glacial lakes of
Wyoming
peaks, meditating in the Florida Keys, playing Indian tablas in the
sand dunes
of Death Valley or even dancing till dawn at the Montreal Olympics in
1976, Mo
patiently searched the continent for a place to call home.
Repulsed
by the Vietnam War and its
consequences in North America, Mo headed south, embarking in a two-year
overland
trip from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, to master the Spanish language
on the road. Riding on
top of Salvadorian trains into the jungle or sleeping in Inca baths at Machupichu, Mo
embraced
the Mundo Latino as his own until, one day, just like Uganda,
army tanks rolled into the
Peruvian town (where he was living) to slaughter villagers in the
market
square. For the next five years, in SE Asia, Mo worked with thousands
of Lao,
Khmer and Vietnamese families in refugee camps all over South East Asia
helping
to ease their post war resettlement into America. From then on, for
the next
decade, empowering the poor all over the world as trainer and rights
activist
of marginalized groups, Mo found his home through his work using Thailand
as his
nesting place.
Over
the last three years, Mo has returned
to his original passion –writing. The first volume of his
memoirs— “A
Chameleon’s Tale: True Stories of a Global
Refugee”
—published
in June 2006, is a reflection of his life of travel and the continued
search
for a home. Mo currently lives in Chiang Mai and writes articles and
feature
stories for various magazines in the region. His ‘stalking
interview’ in Bangkok
with 2001
Literature Nobel Prize Laureate V.S. Naipaul recently appeared in
Untamed
Travel magazine.
Mo Tejani - an Indian Muslim by ancestry - was
expelled from Idi Amin's Uganda in 1972. Torn apart from his family and
exiled from the continent of his birth, he was suddenly left homeless,
with little sense of his own cultural identity. Over the next three
decades on the road, he worked with non-profit agencies, learned a host
of new languages, met fellow cultural nomads in forlorn and faraway
places, and became involved in some of the world's most significant
historical events.
In this entertaining, globetrotting memoir, the
author travels through all five continents in search of a place he can
call home. The trials and tribulations of 'identity shopping' in the
'multicultural supermarket' of today almost bring him to the brink of
alienation, but, as he discovers over the years, there are many along
the road who are ready to lend a helping hand. Join him on his journey
as he seeks liberation from his cultural change and the catharsis of
realizing his true identity.
" Hold on tight for a wild and whacky ride over a
34 year span from Asia to Africa to America with Mo's camera eye on
pivotal events." Joe Cummings - Author, Lonely Planet Thailand Mo
writes about Mo - I developed a passion for the world of books and
travel early on in life in Africa. After exile from Idi Amin's Uganda
in 1972, I have traveled extensively around the globe for the last 34
years.
Mo writes: Along the way, I have picked up an
undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts, and two Master's Degrees in
Literature and International Studies, all from American Universities. I
have taught English in Uganda, Canada, United States, Guatemala,
Ecuador and Thailand. I have written several articles and stories in
various travel magazines and currently live in Chiang Mai. A
Chameleon's Tale is the first volume of my memoirs. For my talk I will
give a brief introduction on the writing process of the book, followed
by a 10-15 minute reading from the book and then open the floor for
questions.
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