In the summer, I spent a month volunteering with the Travelteer organisation in Ait Bouguemez, a valley four and a half hours east of Marrakech in the High Atlas Mountains in northern Morocco. I was taking part in the ‘Atlas Outreach’ programme organised by the Travelteer non-profit charity movement, which runs between June and August. The core aims of the charity are to unlock the potential of under-privileged children, rehabilitate and regenerate the local environment, develop infrastructure in disadvantaged communities, and utilise volunteers to maintain and develop projects. The primary ways we achieved these aims in Ait Bouguemez were by aiding families in rural areas in day-to-day duties, enhancing the quality of education there by taking part in the construction of new sanitary infrastructure, and implementing new teaching methods to help them gain a better understanding of the English language.  

 

During my stay in Morocco, my time was split between working on the project from Monday to Friday, and the excursions we went on at the weekends. Since the days on the project were quite similar, I will give a rundown of what a typical day spent working in Ait Bouguemez would look like.  

 

 

For the whole time that we were living and working in the valley, each gîte (pronounced “jeet”, roughly translates to  ‘guesthouse’) had a cook who made breakfast, lunch and dinner. At Gîte Safranière du M’Goun, my gîte, we had the wonderful Omar who prepared us a breakfast for 8 am sharp, with meals ranging from apple porridge to fried bread to pancakes. We would have a pot of coffee and a pot of Moroccan tea to drink, both made in the traditional style – the coffee having quite an earthy taste and the tea tasting like liquid sugar on a good day (sometimes referred to as ‘Berber whisky’). Taking my coffee on the balcony on a couple of occasions was absolute bliss as the view was second to none. 

Taking my coffee on the balcony on a couple of occasions was absolute bliss as the view was second to none

After breakfast, a pair of volunteers would wash up whilst everyone else got ready to work on whatever project we had been assigned for the morning. We’d leave the gîte at 9 (or we were supposed to – our time management faltered on occasion), headed for a duty that was usually either helping the builders at the school near Safranière or aiding villagers in the harvesting/collecting/transportation/storing process of the ‘alpha alpha’ grass they used to feed their livestock. The toilet block we helped build at the  school was at foundation level when we arrived at the start of my first week, and we helped cement the foundations themselves. After nine or ten days, we had aided in the entire construction process and developed the building as far as we could before more specialist skills were required. There are pictures of us standing atop a new toilet block that we helped build from the ground up, and it was quite a confirming moment for me as I could really see our work producing very real, tangible results. 

There are pictures of us standing atop a new toilet block that we helped build from the ground up, and it was quite a confirming moment for me as I could really see our work producing very real, tangible results

 

After we had spent a couple of hours working on a physical project, we would head back to the gîte for a shower and some lunch, which was served at 1 pm. A typical dish that we would have for lunch was lentils, tuna sweetcorn, a slice or two of bread, and a vegetable salad.  

 

After lunch, we would usually get an hour or two to ourselves. I often passed the time reading, but on occasion, we would plan lessons for the upcoming teaching that afternoon. Some of us had different approaches, but the collaboration sessions, where we would gather and share ideas on how best to deliver the lessons so that they could be effective and engaging, were really entertaining. I had not done much tutoring before my time in Morocco, so it was a valuable experience, tutoring a range of children from different age categories and different abilities.  

 

On that note, around 3 pm, we would head to the nearby school to teach the kids for an hour or so. Seeing as their term had ended, our lessons were extracurricular, so the attendance was quite informal, and we got a different cohort of children every day. Each day brought new opportunities to develop our teaching process and new challenges as we had to adapt our methods to each new set of children. The language barrier was difficult to overcome for sure, as English is the fourth language for a lot of them, after Amazigh, Arabic, and French. Furthermore, oftentimes, each child had a different grounding in languages, with some only knowing Amazigh and Arabic, some not knowing much Amazigh,  and a small handful that knew French far better than the other two languages. Whereas a decent grounding in Arabic could aid your teaching with one student, you’d often find it wouldn’t help much with the next student. Never before my time in Morocco had I encountered a culture so fluid in the languages it uses; it was a unique experience, to say the least. 

 

Each day brought new opportunities to develop our teaching process and new challenges as we had to adapt our methods to each new set of children

 

After our time teaching, we would usually play football with the kids – for some, I got the impression that the opportunity to play football was the primary motivation for attending school. It was interesting to see how central football was to the valley’s culture, with most of the boys playing football whenever they could. You could see the passion of supporters in attendance at the ‘valley league’ games, where two of the ten village teams played against each other on most nights in the summer months.  

 

 

After we had played football for an hour, we’d return to the gîte and have dinner together around 7 pm. For dinner, we had a range of meals, including tagines, couscous-based dishes and grilled goat. The food was delicious and a definite highlight of the trip. 

 

Our days would usually round off with a trip to the nearby café to relax or to attend the weekly quiz, organised by the UK coordinators, which was always a lot of fun. 

 

In all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time volunteering in Morocco, and I met some amazing new people, all of whom became good friends, and my stay was made unforgettable by the people I met and the incredible experiences that we had the chance to share. A big thank you to Travelteer for making it possible, and to the lovely people of Ait Bouguemez, with whom I had the opportunity to live and work.

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