Morcenet Afourer

S.A.R. le Prince Héritier Moulay El Hassan a inauguré le stade 'Prince Moulay Abdellah', après les travaux de sa reconstruction. https://lematin.ma/nation/sar-le-prince-heritier-moulay-el-hassan-inaugure-le-stade-de-rabat/299863?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook =1757011030

No even a word after all this

“My mama is a woman, flawless and formidable in the same step. / Woman walks into a warzone and has warriors cowering at her feet,” writes Yale senior Emtithal "Emi" Mahmoud in her poem, “Mama” -- for her stellar performance of this and her other work, Mahmoud won the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship in Washington, D.C. last month. The Sudanese American, who went from a novice poetry slammer to the world champion in only four years, says that her victory was a shock: “I was like, ‘Wait, what? That just happened?’”

Mahmoud is originally from the Darfur region of Sudan, but her family escaped to Yemen while she was still a toddler. However, her parents continued to work to raise awareness of the genocide in their home country. “They wanted to protect us from what was actually happening,” she explains. “When I insisted they tell me, they did. I just picked up a pen and started writing and going on speaking tours with them.” After Mahmoud discovered spoken word performance as a freshman at Yale, she auditioned for the university's two spoken-word team but didn't make the cut. “Of course I didn’t get in," she says. "It was the first time I ever tried." Undaunted, she joined a spoken word club, ¡Oye!, and honed her skills. A few months later she made the Yale Slam Team and participated in her first competition last year.

Her performance and victory at the World Championship in October was bittersweet; Mahmoud learned shortly before the competition began that her grandmother had died. She had decided not to attend so she could be with her parents but they urged her to go, telling her that her grandmother would have wanted her to participated. “My grandma never learned how to read or write. They didn’t teach women how to do that back then in my country,” she explains. “[W]hen she was staying with us here, she was always over my shoulder: ‘Do your thing. Read, read, write.’”

At the competition, she earned perfect scores with her first two poems and made it to the final round. That night, since she had used her two best works in the first rounds, Mahmoud finished her poem “Mama” and wrote a tribute to her grandmother for the finals. Even with only a few hours to practice her new poems, she received a standing ovation in the middle of her final round performance. “It was the craziest thing,” she marvels. “People were so receptive; you could lose yourself on stage and everyone was there to hold you.”

Mahmoud used the competition “to expel some of the emotion [from her grandmother's death] in poetry so I wouldn’t be there moping and feeling sad.” She believes that it's important to confront such emotions instead of allowing them to "become a part of you" and take control. In "Mama," she wrote: “I was walking down the street when a man stopped me and said, / ‘Hey yo sistah, you from the motherland?... you got a little bit of flavor in you, / I’m just admiring what your mama gave you’… Don’t talk about my flavor unless you know that / My flavor is insurrection, it is rebellion, resistance... I turned to the man and said, / My mother and I can’t walk the streets alone back home any more. / Back home, there are no streets to walk any more.”

As for other aspiring poets out there, Mahmoud offers these words of advice: “[W]hen you go up there on the stage, you have a right to be there. Anything you say is worth listening to; your exercise of human expression is important. And I think that’s the most important thing to remember.”

To read more about Emi Mahmoud's story and a transcript of her poem "Mama" on Yale News, visit http://bit.ly/1MsA1fH. You can also follow her on Facebook at Emi Mahmoud Neopriestess.

For more poetry exploring the mother-daughter relationship, we highly recommend the illustrated edition of Sarah Kay’s poem “B” (http://www.amightygirl.com/b) and “Borrowed Names: Poems about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie, and Their Daughters” (http://www.amightygirl.com/borrowed-names)

For ways to help strengthen the mother-daughter relationship, including by writing a shared journal together, check out the recommendations in our blog post, “A Mighty Bond: Books to Deepen Mother-Daughter Relationships,” at http://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=10003

To encourage your children's interest in creative writing, visit our blog post on "Fantastic Adventures and Amazing Tales: Encouraging Creative Writing and Storytelling" for a selection of writing-oriented books, toys, and activities for both children and teens at http://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=4937

Included among the recommendations are three excellent guides for aspiring young writers: "Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly" for ages 8 to 12 (http://www.amightygirl.com/writing-magic), "Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook" for ages 9 to 14 (http://www.amightygirl.com/spilling-ink), and "Seize the Story" for ages 12 to 17 (http://www.amightygirl.com/seize-the-story)

Love this!!! So funny!

A tight hug to all of you dear members,
As many of you might have heard,my long experience in serving you as an English teacher will end up this year.I am definitely satisfied with and proud of all the achievements we gained as teachers and students.Our collaborative approach to dealing with things and the support we preserve for each others were the secret of all the numerous successes which our English department wetnessed.I am certainly going to miss everyone of you,teachers and students .But here is my promise to you:
-I will be an eternal servant for the reading club we founded together.
-I will be ready to help with your lessons through out the school year.
Don't hesitate then to contact me any time you like.Aoll the best.

Have a good start.

Jake came here last weekend but no one of you showed up.It"s a pity the man cycled all the way from Ouled Mbark to discover that nobody was waiting for him.He said he enjoyed working with you but he was upset and down.Will you be available next weekend ....confirm please.

A devil on earth:A short story by Ommayma Chegdali.
Once upon a time, a girl was living happily with her parents the king and the queen of far away kingdom. The little princess paints the world with her magic wand she radiates the glow around her. Now you are thinking that this is the end and they live happily ever after. Think again, this is not the end, it is just the beginning, unfortunately, the king passed away during a war and the queen ended her life by jumping from the summit of a mountain. After the death of the parents, the girl's life had changed completely. She lived in an enormous spooky grey castle made of cold stones. In spite of being surrounded by an army of servant she fell lonely and desperate, she lost desire in life. At the beginning she cried loudly, yelled furiously, broke everything she found on her way and also broke the silence in the castle. At the night, the poor orphan girl had nightmares and she was walking in the corridors while she is asleep. After a while she has been acclimatized, many of the servants thought that she has found her inner peace again but on the contrary she has buried all those negative feelings deep in her heart. The little girl has turned into a little devil that spread sadness and pain, she has become reticent and heartless, and her sad eyes hide frightening planes. Every night, she woke up and discovers new crypts in the castle; finally she has found what she looked for. One day her aunt comes to meet her niece she has given the little devil a charming black cat whose eyes are green and its forehead is white. Of course the orphan didn't like the gift. The next morning, the floor was covered with brown dirty blood, the devil did it, the night before she held scissors and shaved its smooth fur, she cut its tail and ears, And she cut the cat into thousand small pieces and put the head of the cat in front of her aunt's room’s door. The girl loved making people suffer, she feel so high. The devil's aunt decided to stay with her niece to protect her from dangers, Unconscious that that her niece is the danger itself. Days passed and also nights, the little girl has grown up, in the past she was torturing animal and killing them slowly but now she tortures human beings. The first victim was the cook, the cook woke up at almost 3 am she was thirsty so she left her bed and went to the kitchen. When she was going downstairs by the light of the moon coming in from a big sized window, she heard some noise after a few seconds she saw red bright eyes and then she has disappeared in the dark. It was the devil, she picked her from her neck, she lured her to the cellar, enchained her with iron shackles, took her eyes out from their sockets, cut her tongue, her arm, her leg, burned her skin, uprooted her hair and cut her throat slowly, watched the glowing blood pouring from her neck by the candle light finally she threw her from the window. The devil’s eyelashes haven’t blinked. The second victim was her aunt, She tortured her until death, the little Satan cut her aunt’s fingers one by one, broke her lower jaw and uprooted her white shining teeth one by one, she picked off her soft skin and finally she burnt her aunt when she still alive. What a cruel heart! That night she plunged into a never-ending nightmare; she saw a black cat walking in the kitchen slowly. The next morning she has been mad of anger, all the day she has been hearing a voice of a cat and suddenly the voice has stopped for a long time. At the night, when she was preparing for sleeping, a meow broke the silence. she come out to check the source of the sound and she saw a reflection of a shadow dancing in a mirror, when she approached to the mirror a dark big creature comes out of the mirror ; it was the soul of the black cat she has back to revenge . The girl was running in the castle like a fool and the creature pursuits her, she got into the woods and never come out. A citizen claimed that she was hanged others said that she drowned in the river. I think that she deserve an end of a devil.

In memory of the first contact with Jacob Stern.

Amazing performances and exchanges

Actions not words!

Learning by doing!

Morcenet Afourer in action