When you greet people in different countries, it is a good idea to know what is normal for their culture. Depending on how close we are with a person here, we might just say hi or say hi with a hand shake. If we are close with the person, we might give a tight hug. Some countries greet with a cheek to cheek kiss, a kiss on the lips, or a bow. Coming from America, we are glad that kissing in not one of the ways to greet in Chad.

When you greet someone in Chad, it is a greeting with a handshake. You need to make sure that you only use your right hand for this for reasons that I will not reveal in this blog. When we would walk down the street carrying something, we would try to make sure that what we carried was in our left hand (we never mastered carrying on the head). We did this so that we wouldn’t accidentally greet someone with the wrong hand. And if you entered a gathering of people, you would go around and not only greet the one/s you knew, but also the entire group, one by one, with a handshake. “Inte afe.”