Top Tweets for #IdentitySorting

12 days ago

#Chad 🇹🇩 #Novel394 #GrandSortingOfOrigins #CensusScandal #HausaStigma #H23 #IdentitySorting #ToumaiFracture #TheReality 🇹🇩 CHAD IN NOVEL N°394: THE GRAND SORTING OF ORIGINS The agent knocks. Steaming coffee, handshakes, children running between the mats. Everything begins like a family visit. The tablet lights up. Questions about the roof, about water, about children born and those who left. Then the question arrives, soft, almost innocent: "Your ethnicity?" And there, on the digital screen that was supposed to simplify everything, the word appears like a sentence: #HAUSA, ethnicity of foreign origin. The Hausa laughs first. He laughs the way one laughs at old jokes about origins. Then the laugh freezes. Because this is no longer a bartering or market conversation. It is the State that classifies. It is the census machine that decides who is "of native stock" and who remains "from elsewhere." CHAPTER I — THE COFFEE THAT TURNS TO VINEGAR??? Thirty-seven thousand agents have been trained in cascade. Twenty-three provinces, departmental headquarters, training that began on May 29. On June 20, the main counting was officially launched. Everything is ready, everything is digital, everything is "modern." Except that in the "individual characteristics" section, a box waits. A box that does not count the mouths to feed, nor the roofs that leak, nor the children who have no school. A box that sorts bloodlines. Why this box? Why, in a country where every family carries within itself journeys of several centuries, must one be reminded that he is an "foreigner" and another that he is "perhaps of native stock"? Who programmed this distinction into the tablet? Who validated it? Who explained to the agent that it was "pertinent"? The Hausa is not alone. Thousands of other Chadians, born here, having grown up here, having buried their dead here, discover that their name carries an invisible but official label. CHAPTER II — THE LAND THAT NEVER ASKED FOR A PASSPORT Chad is a crossroads. Peoples arrived here through the desert, through the river, through the tracks of the Sahel. Some fled drought, others followed livestock, others still sought a market. All mixed their sweat with the red dust. The #Hausa who sells fabric in #Abéché or who farms in the west is no more an "foreigner" than the #Kanembou whose ancestors came from #Bornou, or the #Sara whose memory traces back to ancient migrations, or the #Zaghawa #Chadians. All are children of the same wind. So why does the digital tool, this beautiful modern toy funded to "better plan development," decide to reopen old identity wounds? Why remind the foreign origin to him who pays his taxes, who sends his children to the village school, who sheds his blood when necessary? Is it to count the needs in water, in health, in schools? Or is it to count something else? The dark humor slides all by itself at #Toumaï: we train 37,000 agents so they know how to tap on a tablet, and the first thing they learn to classify is who is "imported." As if the development of the country depended on knowing who is "pure" and who is not. HassaИ Al-ProfessoЯ

hassanal_Prof's tweet photo. #Chad 🇹🇩 #Novel394 #GrandSortingOfOrigins #CensusScandal #HausaStigma #H23 #IdentitySorting #ToumaiFracture #TheReality

🇹🇩 CHAD IN NOVEL N°394: THE GRAND SORTING OF ORIGINS

The agent knocks. Steaming coffee, handshakes, children running between the mats. Everything begins like a family visit. The tablet lights up. Questions about the roof, about water, about children born and those who left. Then the question arrives, soft, almost innocent: "Your ethnicity?"

And there, on the digital screen that was supposed to simplify everything, the word appears like a sentence: #HAUSA, ethnicity of foreign origin.

The Hausa laughs first. He laughs the way one laughs at old jokes about origins. Then the laugh freezes. Because this is no longer a bartering or market conversation. It is the State that classifies. It is the census machine that decides who is "of native stock" and who remains "from elsewhere."

CHAPTER I — THE COFFEE THAT TURNS TO VINEGAR???
Thirty-seven thousand agents have been trained in cascade. Twenty-three provinces, departmental headquarters, training that began on May 29. On June 20, the main counting was officially launched. Everything is ready, everything is digital, everything is "modern." Except that in the "individual characteristics" section, a box waits. A box that does not count the mouths to feed, nor the roofs that leak, nor the children who have no school. A box that sorts bloodlines.

Why this box?
Why, in a country where every family carries within itself journeys of several centuries, must one be reminded that he is an "foreigner" and another that he is "perhaps of native stock"?
Who programmed this distinction into the tablet? Who validated it? Who explained to the agent that it was "pertinent"?

The Hausa is not alone. Thousands of other Chadians, born here, having grown up here, having buried their dead here, discover that their name carries an invisible but official label.

CHAPTER II — THE LAND THAT NEVER ASKED FOR A PASSPORT
Chad is a crossroads. Peoples arrived here through the desert, through the river, through the tracks of the Sahel. Some fled drought, others followed livestock, others still sought a market. All mixed their sweat with the red dust. The #Hausa who sells fabric in #Abéché or who farms in the west is no more an "foreigner" than the #Kanembou whose ancestors came from #Bornou, or the #Sara whose memory traces back to ancient migrations, or the #Zaghawa #Chadians. All are children of the same wind.
So why does the digital tool, this beautiful modern toy funded to "better plan development," decide to reopen old identity wounds?

Why remind the foreign origin to him who pays his taxes, who sends his children to the village school, who sheds his blood when necessary?
Is it to count the needs in water, in health, in schools? Or is it to count something else?

The dark humor slides all by itself at #Toumaï: we train 37,000 agents so they know how to tap on a tablet, and the first thing they learn to classify is who is "imported." As if the development of the country depended on knowing who is "pure" and who is not.

HassaИ Al-ProfessoЯ

466

Top Tweets for #IdentitySorting

Last Seen Hashtags on Sotwe

Trends for you

Most Popular Users