‘Passing for white’ was a complicated feeling at home in Ohio. In Chad, it was a whole different experience again. By Alexander Hurst
Every time I crossed the courtyard, walked past the well in the corner and slipped out of the baby blue gate nestled into the high brick wall that surrounded my Chadian host family’s house, I instantly became nasara. It’s a Ngambay word that means both “foreigner” and “white person” at the same time. A little pack of children would follow me down the red-dirt street, chanting “nah-sa-rah, nah-sa-rah” and laughing.
During my first weeks in Moundou I had protested once – in jest – to Sem, a balding evangelical pastor with a belly and a deep laugh, who was my NGO’s main contact in the town. “You know my mom is black, right?” I said to him, from the passenger seat of his SUV.
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