Oconee County resident heads to north Africa for Peace Corps duty

September will be a life-changing time for Chris McCall of Bogart as he leaves for a mission in faraway Morocco as a member of the Peace Corps.

McCall, who graduated North Oconee High School in 2017 and Kennesaw State University in 2021, will live in this north African country and work within the Peace Corps’ youth development program.

The Peace Corps announced recently that it is sending its volunteers back into action following a decision in March 2020 to evacuate its nearly 7,000 volunteers from 60 countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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For McCall, a vision to become a Peace Corps volunteer was inspired during his freshman year at Kennesaw State, when a Peace Corps member who had returned from her overseas mission spoke to a class representing the university’s President’s Emerging Global Scholars.

McCall, a member of this group that took week-long study abroad trips to Costa Rica and Italy, was inspired by the young woman’s story of working with the Peace Corps, a service agency created in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.

Why join the Peace Corps?

“It seemed like a good way to experience a different part of the world and see how people in a country different from your own live on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

“The idea of going somewhere completely different for an extended period of time and experiencing the culture first-hand really spoke to me,” McCall said.

That idea simmered with the freshman student and by his junior and senior years in college he decided to begin the application process. After an interview process, he was accepted.

After graduating Kennesaw, McCall said he worked for 13 months for Kroger on Epps Bridge Parkway, but left the job in July as it neared his time to leave for Morocco.

“I’ve been out spending time with friends,” he said.

He leaves from the Atlanta airport on Sept. 12 to Washington, D.C., where a flight takes him across the Atlantic Ocean.

The young man said his parents, Karen McCall and Charlie McCall, are supportive of his two-year mission with the Corps.

“They are really happy for me,” he said. “They know I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

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What will McCall do in the Peace Corps?

Initially, McCall was slated to work in the southern African nation of Eswatini, once known as Swaziland. This changed and now he heads to Morocco, a country he has in recent months been studying from Peace Corps supplied information on cultural norms and living conditions to YouTube videos he has found. He also engaged a study of the language known as Darija.

The country is located on the continent’s far north, bordering the Mediterranean Sea and separated from Spain by the Strait of Gibraltar. Here he will work in youth development.

“Generally, it’s working with teenagers and young adults like teaching English courses and in many places, you work in after-school programs,” he said.

“To some degree it’s helping guide them as young adults into the next stage of life,” said the young man who also is embarking on a new stage.

The Peace Corps recently announced it is currently seeking volunteers to serve in countries throughout the world. Volunteers have already returned to 23 countries. For more information, go to www.peacecorps.gov.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Bogart man leaves for Africa as member of Peace Corps