Any visit to the medina of Rabat will reveal to you a world of constant activity. You’ll find vendors selling street food, fruit, spices, djellabas, streetwear, shoes, electronics, teapots, art, and just about all the other things you could want when visiting Morocco. There are homes and hotels all over the medina, and restaurants for when you get hungry. But even with all the people who live in Rabat medina, there are yet more inhabitants that we don’t usually think about: the cats. Trust me, they are everywhere, and not just in the medina. Cats are all over Rabat and the other cities of Morocco. After the cats were mentioned briefly at the pre-departure orientation, I had a preconceived idea in my mind that the cats were just considered by Moroccans to be a nuisance like stray animals here in the US, but I was delightfully surprised to find that this is not the case.

The key difference between the treatments of strays in America versus Morocco is that in America they are seen as belonging to nobody, while the street cats here in Morocco are seen as belonging to everybody. There’s one cat in particular who I usually see on the way to class in the morning, an orange kitty who’s always hanging around outside the hanout. She has a little cardboard box with a bed inside which sits there on the sidewalk under the overhang of the building, and the mul hanout feeds her each day; I’ve seen people passing by give her scraps too. Moroccans often collect the leftover food from their meals, and instead of throwing it out or saving it for later, they put it outside for the animals on the street. Taking care of Moroccan cats is a collective endeavor, which I think could never happen in the US because we are (for some reason) so averse to collective responsibility and altruistic cooperation. The longer I’m here, the more I like the Moroccan way, since it helps to ensure that these beautiful creatures don’t go hungry, and overall I think that the street cats here are much better cared for than those in the US. Still, I’m a little sad that these cats don’t have warm homes and humans to bond with.

Most of my friends know that I love cats, so resisting the urge to pet every one I see here in Morocco has been a real struggle. The cat that lives by the hanout has a couple scars on her head, but is in otherwise good shape. Many of the cats here have at least some small wounds, which is indicative of a lack of veterinary care for them – no surprise, since they live in the streets, but still it’s saddening to see. I would feel guilty if my pets had untreated injuries, so I wonder if Moroccans feel the same about their neighborhood animals. We know of the bystander effect: unfortunately, sometimes things that are everyone’s responsibility end up not being taken care of at all, since each person thinks everyone else will take care of it. I’m not sure whether the bystander effect is actually a factor here, but at the very least there certainly is the potential for the communal method of caring for the cats to fail in this respect. I worry how many cats in Rabat are in awful condition and we just don’t see them.

In my opinion, the way Moroccans take care of their street cats as communities is a reflection of their hospitable culture towards guests. There seems to be a notion that since the cats are there, they have to be provided for – I interpret the collection of leftovers for the animals as symbolic of Moroccans’ respect for them. It gives me the impression that the animals are treated as neighbors, which is a little bit like the idea in the US that pets are members of the family. Similarly, when you are a guest in a Moroccan home, no expense is spared to ensure you have comfortable accommodations, plenty of food, and so forth. This is an extension of the Moroccan sense of community, in which neighbors just take care of each other; I feel like this isn’t usually the case in the United States. I also enjoy that the Moroccan sense of community gives a sense of belonging and collective duty to your neighbors – in the US, people tend to be too individualistic for that atmosphere to exist. However, my time here has showed me how important it is to work together as a community to care for each other, and the positive effects it can have for everyone involved.

Even the way that strays are perceived in each culture reveals something about the way Americans and Moroccans think differently. Americans often see stray animals as a problem which needs to be dealt with: the animals are considered a nuisance to the community and are collected either to be put in a shelter or euthanized. On the other hand, Moroccans see the cats as part of their neighborhoods, and as a result there isn’t really an issue to be dealt with, but the cats are taken care of to some extent. Ultimately, I can’t really see either method as perfect. It just doesn’t sit right with me to think of these animals as problems to the community; after all, they’re living beings, and I think that regarding the population of homeless animals this way fails to respect that status. I concede that it is nice to consider the potential for animals in shelters to find homes and loving humans, and animals in shelters can be spayed and neutered to avoid creating more homeless animals. But this doesn’t always happen, and the sad alternative is euthanasia because we can’t (or won’t) provide for the animals as a community. In this regard, the Moroccan way makes a lot of sense to me, since the cats are in general provided for with regard to food and shelter. But then again, the lack of veterinary care is a concern for Moroccan street cats.

I won’t pretend to know what the best way is to take care of the strays of Morocco and the US. But I do think that Moroccans’ sense of community and the benefits it brings to the care of their street cats is commendable, and I want to emulate that sense of community myself. I think that we don’t take enough care of each other in the US – certainly I’m no exception – and I’m committing now to being a better and more attentive friend and neighbor in my community at home.

Of all the things that went through my head prior to coming to Morocco, I can say with confidence that I never thought to myself “man, I can’t wait to be illiterate!” But… here I am, in a foreign country 3500 miles from home, and totally unable to read a solid 90% of written Arabic I come across. As an English speaker, I enjoy the benefits of knowing some vocabulary in French, but my situation for that language isn’t much better.

The strange truth is that not being able to read or write or speak the languages of Morocco has been simultaneously freeing and terrifying for me. From time to time, I worry about getting into situations where my level of Arabic simply won’t be enough to facilitate communication with Moroccans. For example, last week I was at the hanout buying spices to make dinner, and when the shop owner asked me what I wanted I realized I didn’t know the word for cayenne pepper. After trying to explain what I meant for a minute or two, I decided to just cut my losses and only buy cumin and paprika. It was discouraging to get tripped up on something so small, but it really reminded me of how little Arabic I know and how difficult things can be as a result.

Even more frustrating is when I’m talking to someone and they can understand my (basic) Darija, but I can’t understand what the other person is saying. It feels like we’re so close to good communication, but at the same time so far from actually making the connection.

But at the same time I think that not relying on being able to read, in particular, makes Morocco more beautiful. It’s easy to get caught up in signs or posters as you walk down the street, but if you can’t read them, it allows you to appreciate your surroundings as a whole instead of focusing on one thing in particular. As a beginning Arabic speaker in Morocco I feel more free from the constant commercialization we experience everywhere we go in the US, essentially because I just don’t understand the advertisements. Inwi’s texting me trying to get me to buy something? Guess what, I just plain don’t understand what you want! What I’m getting at is that in our society in the US, we place a lot of emphasis on reading things, while ignoring our other senses. I consider myself lucky that while I’m here I’m forced to rely on more than just reading, since it opens the door to experiencing the country in other ways.

Likewise, I’ve experienced a similar phenomenon during live interaction with Moroccans. Being unable to fully express your thoughts in words or to interpret those of others means you’re forced to take note of other signals from them: expressions, gestures, body language. I know I’ve become at least a little bit more attentive to these smaller forms of communication in the absence of the verbal form. It makes me wonder how much information I’ve failed to notice from these more subtle clues during my interactions with friends, family, and other Americans.

I’ve really struggled with the fact that speaking with someone doesn’t just come naturally yet in Arabic. I’m at the point of conscious ineptitude, which is a fancy way to say that I’m bad at Arabic and I know it. At home in the US, I can speak to my friends and family and nearly everyone I meet on the street with no problems, because English is at this point so ingrained in my brain that I almost don’t have to even think about it. On the other hand, speaking Arabic here is so much more exhausting than speaking English at home, because in addition to managing a conversation as usual I have to exert some real energy just to make the words come out. But I know that it’ll be worth it. I recall being in a similar situation when learning Spanish – it’s really easy to fall into the trap of translating phrase by phrase in your head, which slowed me down so much. I won’t pretend to be fluent in Spanish, but I’ve learned to stop trying to translate it to English but instead get in the mindset to think in Spanish. I’m really hoping that my time in Morocco will do the same for me with Darija.

I can’t talk about my difficulties with speaking and reading the language here in Morocco without saying that I have noticed that Moroccans truly appreciate it when you attempt to speak Darija or Fusha, even when you can only say a few words. I always feel at ease when my “salam” or “shukran” elicit a polite response from the Moroccans I see each day, and an actual sentence usually draws out a full smile from them. In the United States, I don’t think we get excited like that for people speaking English, and now that I’m the one who’s learning the local language I feel a little bad for not being as positive with English learners as Moroccans are with me. I don’t think I quite appreciated it as much previously, because it’s difficult to understand exactly how it feels when you haven’t experienced it yourself. That’s certainly something I’ll take home with me, and try to spread to my friends and family – as long as I can put it into (English) words.

Amir and I have made an inside joke out of imitating the tram announcer saying “ITTIJAH: MADINAT AL-3IRFAN”, but I want to point out that “ittijah” is a word that I learned by living in Rabat instead of in class or through the internet. And our little joke has contributed a lot to me remembering what it means. In some sense, I’m a blank slate during my time here, and I’ll have to learn Darija by experiencing it and by using it in my life here. It’s difficult to ride the tram without knowing what “ittijah” and “al-mahata al-qaadima” mean, so I learned them. That’s pretty amazing, you know, how easily we can learn things when we need to know them.

Besides, there’s so much to experience in Morocco that you don’t need words for. There’s history here that you can almost feel in the air, and Moroccan friendliness and hospitality transcends the language barrier. In the future I’ll strive to extend that same goodwill to those visiting the US for the first time, since I’ll have been in their place.