In this interview, we hear from Joaquin Ross Telechea. Joaquin is a Peace Corps volunteer working as a Youth Development volunteer in Morocco. What Joaquin shares gives us a better understanding of the work volunteers do. We learn about the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that happens from volunteering in a new place. Joaquin talks about living in a different country, working with local people, and dealing with surprise situations. Join us as we learn about Joaquin’s journey and see how volunteering with the Peace Corps can change lives.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- A Journey of Growth and Gratitude
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. Can you tell us more about serving as an Youth Development volunteer in Morocco?
Teaching at the Women’s Center: Empowering Through Language and Skills
The life of a Youth Development volunteer in Morocco is very subjective and completely depends on where your site is as well as how large it is. In my case, I was placed in a semi-urban site in the south of Morocco, meaning I had lots of work opportunities but also less of the ability to integrate into my site.
Day to day, I taught English or Spanish (depending on what the students wanted) every morning at a women’s center focused on teaching women how to cook or make traditional clothing with the goal of empowering them to find employment. I catered my classes to teaching them vocabulary and conversational language skills revolving around cooking and making clothes. Attendance and engagement at these classes were very consistent as the women paid to be at the center.
Youth Center Challenges: Creating Structure and Engaging Students
Every evening, I would lead activities and teach English or Spanish at my assigned youth center. Unlike at the women’s center, I had to organize and create the schedule for the youth center as it was completely unstructured. Students varied in age, from 5 to 30 years old, and attendance was inconsistent since no one had to pay to come.
Besides teaching languages, the activities I ran varied from an environment club to professionalism building, to watching movies together. I had counterparts who helped me teach classes and lead activities, especially when the activities required a higher language level than what I had.
Adapting to Moroccan Life: Balancing Work, Hobbies, and Off-Time
Between these two main work components, I would hang out at home reading, playing guitar, studying Arabic, watching TV shows, or planning my classes and other projects. I would also go to restaurants, buy things I need, hang out with friends at the local cafe, or exercise. Taroudant (my site) is also mainly an old medina, so I would spend lots of time walking around getting to know the small alleys and the souk (market) in the center.
Life in Morocco in general is pretty slow, and it took a long time to get used to that. You almost never work 8 hours a day unless you’re at a summer camp, and coming from the US you almost feel guilty for not doing more. But the reality is that it’s impossible to work that much because no one else does, so your only option is to get used to it and enjoy the plentiful offtime you get by finding hobbies.
2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose Morocco?
I love traveling but came to realize that the aspect I loved most about traveling was getting to know a culture on a deeper level. Peace Corps provides a way for you to travel and truly integrate into a new culture while also giving back to the country that is hosting you.
Out of college, I was working a typical 9-5 job and realized that I could do that whenever I wanted in my life, but perhaps traveling and picking up all my things and moving to a new country was something that would be more difficult to do as I got older. So I decided to try something new while I still hadn’t settled my roots anywhere.
I chose Morocco because it was a culture and a country that I was unfamiliar with and because of the opportunity it presented to learn a dialect of Arabic. I already spoke Spanish and had traveled to South America extensively in the past, so I wanted to embark on a journey where I challenged myself and was placed somewhere that I would be more out of my comfort zone.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. Tell us more about your home situation:
Living with My First Host Family: Immersed in Moroccan Culture
During our first 3 months in-country, we lived with a host family in our training sites where we studied Arabic and technical skills alongside 3-4 other trainees (who live in other host families) and with a Moroccan language and cultural facilitator (LCF). These first few months are pivotal to the rest of your service as you learn about all the different cultural differences, what is appropriate and what is not, how to speak Arabic, and how the youth centers work. All of us embarrassed ourselves countless times during this training period, but the lessons learned are priceless for the rest of your service.
The best part of my first host family was their 3 kids who were between the ages of 10 and 20. They took me out to hang out with their friends and always wanted to hang out with me. They treated me like their older brother. And my host mom was an amazing cook, and to this day the best food I ate in Morocco was at her house. Moroccan food is really delicious, but it is not the type of cuisine that is well-made at a restaurant as it takes so long to prepare. That is one of the best parts of living with the host family- you will get to eat the best Moroccan food that most tourists will never have the opportunity to try (such as real cous cous on Fridays).
Navigating the Medina: Life in My First Site
After training, we were sent to our final sites. For the first month, I lived with a host family that lived inside the old medina. The medina was like a maze! For the first couple weeks, I would go on walks with my host dad who would stop in the middle of an alley and tell me to get us home (I failed the first 10 times I tried). My host family in Taroudant were kind, although they were a bit old and I had to make connections within my new community on my own.
My first house in Taroudant was inside the old medina and was on the bottom floor of a yet-to-be-built apartment building, so I lived completely on my own. In terms of amenities, the houses we get as PCVs have everything- running water (except for during the summer they often cut it for periods of time), consistent electricity, you can buy wi-fi, etc. I had a Turkish (squat) toilet and learned to actually love it. The biggest downside of the apartments most PCVs rent is that they are made out of cinder blocks, which have no insulation and are really hot during Moroccan summers.
My house was at the end of one of the medina alleys, and I got to meet my whole neighborhood and could go to restaurants and small shops to buy things I needed such as vegetables or meat right around the corner. The downside of living inside of the medina is that I often felt like I was living in a bubble and would rarely feel the fresh air as it was such a congested area. This also meant that it was really hot during the summer.
Adapting to Life in Taroudant: From Traditional Homes to Modern Living
After the earthquake, my house was damaged and I had to move to a new apartment outside of the walls of the medina. This home was newer and a lot nicer but was much farther away from all the shops inside the medina. I had to buy a bicycle to be able to move around, but this ended up having a positive impact on my service since I no longer had to spend hours walking around the medina to get things I needed or to get to work.
Since my site was semi-urban, I was able to find gyms to work out in and could often go on runs (although this depends heavily on your site especially if you are a girl). There were plenty of restaurants to eat at if I didn’t feel like cooking, although the selection was limited. By the end of service, I had found my favorite hole-in-the-wall spots where I could eat lentils or chicken and vegetables for as little as $0.80.
4. Any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had with community members?
Discovering a Hiking Adventure in the High Atlas
Taroudant is located in a valley between the High Atlas and the Anti Atlas mountains. For my first couple months in site, I would always look at the peaks of the High Atlas to the north wanting to go hike in them. I didn’t know anyone in my site that liked to hike, and people looked at me as if I was crazy for wanting to go hike those ridgid mountains.
I eventually found a blog of some Europeans who had gone hiking in the mountains close to my site and on the bottom of the hike description they had left the number of the guide they had used. When I reached out to this guide, I was surprised to learn that he was living in the US and had gotten married to a PCV who had served in my region 5-6 years before me. We talked for a long time, and he eventually gave me the phone number of a friend of his who knew the mountains in the area well.
Planning My First Mountain Trek
When I reached out to Ismael (the local guide), he initially thought that I was a girl. We talked for about a week planning the trip, but I noticed that he kept using feminine conjugations when speaking to me. I eventually asked him if he knew that I was a guy, and he was completely shocked and apologized profusely.
We planned the trip to go hike Jbel Awlim (Mt. Awlim) right before Ramadan. We would take a transport to the nearest village (about 2 hours), spend the night at one of his friend’s house, hike the mountain in a day, and then return the next day. Ismael and I got on from the second we met, and the trip we did only brought us closer.
The First Taste of Amazigh Culture
The village close to the mountain was beautiful, and it was the first time I had been completely immersed in Amazigh (Berber) culture. We stayed in the traditional home of another local guide from the village, and at 3AM we started hiking with the other guide and one of his friends.
The first 3 hours of the hike were along a well maintained trail and we had made good time getting up the steep mountain. We were able to watch the sunrise about halfway up the mountain. I noticed that I was packing lots of water (4 liters) while the rest of the guides had only brought one small water bottle each. When we stopped to eat breakfast, they asked me for my water. They then took out a small gas tank, a teapot, and ceramic plates and used my water to make tea and breakfast. I was shocked, but also found it really funny that they had brought a tea pot and a gas tank instead of water for themselves.
Conquering Jbel Awlim: The Scariest Hike of My Life
The rest of the hike was terrifying. The trail eventually ended and the rest of the hike was scrambling on loose rocks alongside 1,000 foot cliff sides. I have never been so scared in my life, while the guides were doing it in torn up running shoes and were prancing around the edges of the cliffs. Near the top there was slippery snowpack which led to more cliff sides.
When we made it to the top, I was so exhausted I immediately fell asleep. But the view was incredible and you could see from the Sahara all the way to the ocean.
Building a Lasting Friendship
By the time we made it back down to the village, we had been hiking and climbing for 17 hours. From that point on, Ismael became one of my best friends. We went on several trips to the mountains and the beach together throughout the rest of my service.
He later became the guide for my hiking project, in which a fellow PCV and I used a grant to take students to the mountains to build on leadership and environmental awareness. Ismael is not only one of my best friends from my time in Morocco, but for the rest of my life. He showed me the beauty of places in Morocco that I would have never found alone and always cared for me in whatever situation we were in.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about Youth Development challenges in Morocco?
Initially, I was surprised by how much volunteerism was an aspect of Youth Development in Morocco. Many youths go to the youth centers and run activities, help PCVs, or help youth center supervisors without expecting any pay. While this is a great way for youth to stay engaged in their communities, it is also a side effect of thousands of youth in Morocco not being able to find jobs. I think this is one of the greatest challenges in Youth Development in Morocco, as well as one of the challenges the country is facing as a whole: the lack of employment and opportunities for youth.
It’s hard to see because lots of these youth are highly qualified- they speak multiple languages and know how to make presentations, code, or run a business, but there are such few opportunities for them to use the skills they have tirelessly worked for throughout their young careers that they end up volunteering at youth centers just to stay active and not sit at home. This surprised me because in the US, a 23-year-old who speaks 5 languages, knows how to code, has a degree, has excellent social skills, and is ambitious would easily find a job.
6. What challenges did you face while working on Youth Development projects?
One of the greatest challenges that most PCVs in Morocco deal with (including myself) is an overall lack of consistency in attendance and commitment with students and counterparts. As students do not pay for the classes we teach, the classes fall pretty low on their list of priorities, understandably. This meant I would teach an English class one day of the week and prepare a subsequent class for the next day but would end up having a completely different group of students. With counterparts, at the beginning of my service, I relied a lot on a very flaky counterpart who would not show up to activities he had committed to helping me out with, leaving me in difficult-to-manage situations.
I learned to mitigate this lack of consistency with a number of methods. With my students, I typically planned multiple classes for each day so that no matter what group of students showed up, I could engage them with a class that was appropriate to their level. If there weren’t enough students, I would tutor them on a more individual basis or have some games ready so that at least we could have fun together. This proved to work for my classes. On the other hand, for the projects that I had used grant money for, I was strict with the students and gave them a 3 strike policy. If they missed 3 classes, they would be kicked out of the hiking program we were doing. I had to kick one of the students out to prove the point that I would do it, but the message got across.
With my counterparts, I learned to invest my time in people who had proven to be consistent and who stood by their word. I identified students who always came to class and who were engaged and had good language skills and proposed to them to be my counterparts. Investing my time and training into these counterparts proved to be much more fruitful because they never flaked on me and grew a lot from the experience of working with a PCV.
7. Could you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved in?
I mentioned one of the projects that a fellow PCV and I worked on before. It was a 5-month leadership and environmental awareness project for 20 youths (10 from each of our sites) in which we had weekly classes about the environment, team building, and soft skills as well as weekly hikes into the mountains. It was a difficult project to manage, plan, and implement but in the end, it was highly impactful and the students gained a lot from the program.
Another secondary project I took part in was a 3-month cultural exchange/teacher training program that I and a couple of fellow PCVs took part in in collaboration with some local English teachers from my site. Every Friday, we would go to high schools in our region (small towns without PCVs) to first do 2-hour workshops with high school English students where we would play games, talk about American culture, or do different activities to spark a desire for them to continue to learn English. Afterward, we would do an hour-long training with their English teachers, sharing new techniques they can use in their classroom. These outings were really enjoyable and the students as well as the teachers were very engaged and welcoming.
Advice and Support
8. What advice would you give to someone considering serving as an Youth Development volunteer in Morocco?
I think my service changed for the better when I dropped the expectations I had formed before coming to Morocco. I had these lofty expectations of not only changing people’s lives but also that I would get to see the fruit of my work before my eyes. I thought I would be in a tiny village in the mountains where I would know everyone and be completely integrated into my small community. When I was placed in my semi-urban site, I was distraught. It took me months, but I eventually came to the realization that the expectations I had before coming to Morocco were not realistic in my context.
Don’t get me wrong- I know several PCVs who did have the experience that I had expected to have before coming to Morocco. But the reality is that it’s not fully in your control what your service is going to look like, and it’s better to drop whatever expectations you have before coming and live your service knowing that no matter what it looks like, you are having an impact and that you yourself are growing from the experience. You just might not be able to see it in real time.
9. What skills or qualities do you think are most important for a Youth Development volunteer?
I think skills and qualities that are important for Youth Development in Morocco are flexibility and creative problem-solving. I would say you don’t need to be either of these when you come into the Peace Corps- you will develop them no matter what. Every single person in my cohort is now a master of creative problem-solving. I think in the context that we work in, there is little to no structure and constantly moving pieces no matter how hard you try to organize your work life. So being able to change what you’re doing on the fly and still making the most of it is valuable- both in the Peace Corps and beyond.
10. How has the Peace Corps training helped you during your service?
I found that Community Based Training (CBT) was where I got most of what I needed from the Peace Corps. This was the 10-week training when we first arrived in Morocco. If you focus and study, you will learn enough Arabic in order for you to have a successful service. I think language in the context of Morocco is so important because it is how you truly are able to connect with community members. It is how they see that you put in effort to meet them halfway.
Beyond CBT, I think that Peace Corps provides you with adequate training when it comes to applying for grants, managing VRG (the reporting side of being a PCV), and running activities in your youth center. Beyond these parts of your service, the rest you really have to work to figure out on your own. Each site and each youth center is so different from each other that it would be impossible to have a training manual that is applicable to everyone’s experience. I think this is where you grow the most as an individual during your service- having to figure out what works best in your own context.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
11. Anything that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future Morocco volunteers?
Knowing that there are beautiful mountains in Morocco, I made sure to pack my hiking boots, my tent, my sleeping bag, my sleeping pad, and my hiking clothes. I am so happy that I did because I used them so often and I had some of my best memories when I was out camping in the mountains. On the flip side, these items took up a lot of space in my bag and I wasn’t able to fit most of my normal clothes or comfort foods. For me, this method worked because I was forced to go buy clothes at the market (which were super cheap) and learn to live and be happy with what I had around me.
12. How has learning the language been?
Learning Darija (Moroccan Arabic) was one of my favorite parts of my service. I came in without any prior study of any kind of Arabic (so obviously you don’t have to study before you get to the country) and finished testing at an advanced level. I would say that there is a benefit in trying to learn some beforehand (there are some resources out there), but really most of it will come when you are surrounded by the language. I would say constantly trying to practice, even if you are scared to make a mistake, is important. There were definitely people who made fun of me for my Arabic, so I found people who were supportive and helped me learn and spoke with them instead. It’s an incredible feeling when you can tell you are improving- it just takes time and you have to stick with it.
In Morocco, some sites speak more Tamazight (Berber) than Darija. I think this will be something you will have to learn once you are in the country if this is your case.
A Journey of Growth and Gratitude
Joaquin’s time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco shows us how important it is to be open to new experiences and cultures. He learned a lot from working with local people, and his efforts to teach students made a real difference in their lives. His story reminds us that volunteering is not just about helping others, but also about growing as a person.
We want to thank Joaquin for sharing his story and for his hard work in Morocco. We hope his journey inspires others to take on new challenges and make the world a better place, one step at a time.
What are you waiting for? Opportunities like this don’t come often. If you have a passion for service and an adventurous spirit like Joaquin’s, apply to the Peace Corps today. Expand your horizons, push your limits, and create positive impact as a volunteer. You never know how serving as a Peace Corps volunteer could change your life.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Morocco Government.
