Upon hearing the words “Hamdullah wa inshallah,” Mark Apel is transported as if in a time capsule to the many times he and Yossef Ben-Meir, President of the High Atlas Foundation (HAF), uttered them in gratitude for the food set before them or in hope for something good to come of their efforts as Peace Corps Volunteers. “It makes you more mindful of the moment,” he remarked in a recent interview conducted by Yossef for HAF.

Mark was born in France, son of an airman, whose family returned to the U.S. where he grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two months after graduation from Penn State in 1982, he joined the Peace Corps and came to Morocco. There, he was able to use his degree in environmental resource management and specialization in wildlife management as a fisheries volunteer. He had originally aspired to be a veterinarian, but his keen interest in wildlife, parks, and protected areas led him to this more holistic discipline.

Initially having applied for a position in sub-Saharan Africa in wildlife management, he was surprised to be offered the position in Morocco, a country about which he knew little. Yet, he accepted the offer right away because he was eager to serve. This involved two-and-a-half months of rigorous fisheries training in Oklahoma. “It was like boot camp, pretty much under the direction of an autocrat,” he recalled. However, he acknowledged that it instilled a good sense of self-reliance and ability to figure things out and institute a good program in Morocco. He added, “Compared to that training, though, the language and cross-cultural training once I arrived was a piece of cake.”

After two years as a fisheries volunteer in Ouarzazate, when, just as Mark was prepared to leave, he was made aware of the need for a wildlife volunteer by Youssef Alaoui, an engineer with the High Commission of Water and Forests. He remembered that his “ears perked right up” upon this news, and he vowed, “If you guys get a parks and wildlife program going here, I’ll stay,” knowing that this was another two-year commitment. As a result, he became part of the very first cohort of volunteers to serve in wildlife, a field that was still nascent in Morocco in the 1980s. About the opportunity, he humbly stated, “I was in the right place at the right time.”

When Yossef asked during the HAF interview whether Mark could offer any explanation for the tendency in Morocco for things to fall into place just at the right time or just when needed, to this, he replied that he frequently thinks about this notion because, as he put it, “It has actually manifested that way multiple times in my career,” including the position he currently enjoys as Environmental Coordinator with Cochise County in Arizona. He explained, “If we put a certain amount of psychic energy into creating our destinies, especially if it’s in the service of others or contributing to the world in a way, it just happens. I have felt very blessed over the years in that way.”

This is also how he ended up in Arizona, some years after returning from his Peace Corps work in Morocco. His first position there was working for the Nature Conservancy on a nature preserve. He remarked, “It’s a matter of visualizing in your own mind what you would like to be doing.” Coming out west with a new wife into a very remote area was a major shift in thinking, and it required adapting to living conditions very unlike the urban life of Philadelphia, yet not too dissimilar from the circumstances of life in Tassa Ouirgane in the High Atlas Mountains.