Home > Stories > Nate and Sarah Ndjerareou

Biography

Nate Ndjerareou’s mother moved with her family from Chad to the United Stated when he was young. Sarah Ndjerareou’s mother moved from the midwest to Africa with her young children. They grew up traveling internationally, sometimes just missing each other. When Sarah came home to her parents in Cedar Rapids after a life changing event in college, she figured it would be a temporary stop. Nate was hired by Electronic Data Systems (now Hewlett-Packard) after college. As he was getting ready to relocate to Minneapolis, he was reassigned to Cedar Rapids. They met, married, and are the parents of Sophia. They are still an international couple. She writes books; he runs an international business in IT business analysis. Together, and with their family and friends they are able to provide immediate relief to war torn Chad especially since Nate’s brother still lives there where he can receive the money for supplies and distribute them to refugees quickly. Sarah’s book, Pieces of Glass, speaks to refugees to America from all countries. When asked, why Iowa, they are “always able to say that Iowa is a wonderful place to be and to raise a family and we are very thankful for the kind people that are here and the roots that we’ve developed here.”

Transcript

Date of Interview: 17 October 2009

Katie Cheaney: Hello! My name is Katie Cheaney. Today is October 17, 2009. I am interviewing Sarah and Nate Ndjerareou. Welcome! What are your professions?

Nate Ndjerareou: I am an international business analyst in the IT space. So I work with companies all over the world and help them change their operations to operate more efficiently using our software. So I travel a lot and meet with clients all over the world.

Sarah Ndjerareou: And I am a writer and a speaker and a mom.

Katie: For your jobs did you guys have any road blocks or barriers, that held you back from some of your jobs or anything?

Nate Ndjerareou: For my job really the road block was just hard work. It took a lot of work to get to where I am now; a lot of nights away from the family. A lot of weird hours traveling, so the road blocks were really work and finding a good company to work for that would support that type of lifestyle and that work.

Sarah Ndjerareou: It’s been a new transition. He’s been doing this job for about a year and it takes the whole family being on board. As a writer, I can work from wherever and that allows me to then be mom 90% of the time. And we have packed up the family and traveled to L.A. and San Francisco and Mexico this year, because we love to be together as a family, we love to go to different places; we both grew up all over the world. Then we can take our daughter with us and she can experience the life that we do. Part of the reason that we travel so much for work, is then we’re going to be able to go to Nate’s home country of Chad this Christmas and take our daughter there.

Katie: What does Ndjerareou mean?

Nate Ndjerareou: Ndjerareou means builders of the road. Or constructors; people that build the road and so my father gave all the boys in our families, names that played off of Ndjerareou. So the last four letters of Ndjerareou, REOU are the first four letters in my African name, Reoudoje. So Reoudoje means the road to love and brotherhood. Reouede, my older brother means the road keeps growing, because he is the first to carry on the family name. And then Reoubunga my youngest brother means the road to victory. So Ndjerareou means those who build the road, then our first names, the boys’ kind of plays off that, so the road to wherever it’s going. So that’s what it means.

Katie: Where did you guys go to school?

Nate Ndjerareou: For college I went to the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. In Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Sarah Ndjerareou: And for college, I went to Wheaton College in Illinois.

Katie: What brought you to Iowa?

Nate Ndjerareou: Me? It was my job. I had graduated in August of 2000. I was interviewing all over the place. I interviewed with a company called Electronic Data Systems, now Hewlett Packard, out of Dallas. I thought I was going to Minneapolis and at the last minute they changed my assignment to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So that’s how I got here.

Sarah Ndjerareou: My family came here when I was four, I believe. Originally, Rockwell brought us here. Then we moved to Africa and then came back when I was, and went to high school here. So we’ve always had a connection to Cedar Rapids and it feels like it’s been our jumping off point to all over the world. So I came back for what I thought was going to be about six months and ended up marrying Nate and have been here ever since.

Katie: Where were you guys born?

Nate Ndjerareou: I was born in a small village, called Bebalen, B-e-b-a-l-e-n, Chad. Southern Chad. A small village where there was a local missionary hospital that was part of the Evangelical Church of Chad. That’s where I was born.

Sarah Ndjerareou: I was born in Minot, North Dakota of all things. My parents were North Dakota farm kids who ended up being missionaries in Africa.

Katie: Does the Civil War in Chad affect your life or business?

Nate Ndjerareou: It defiantly affects my life. My older brother Rueben, Reouede, lives in Chad. My parents spilt a home in Chad and Dallas. My dad travels even more than I do. And so my grandparents and my extended family live in Chad and so the uprising, the Civil War, the issues going on with Darfur and eastern Chad do affect my family. In fact about, in February of 2008 we received a phone call one Friday and there was an attempted takeover of the country. We just thought it was going to blow over, but for the next four days, I took work off, so it did affect my business. I took time off from work and I spent nights putting together a website, a PayPal site, through Sarah helping me with that and blogging on Sarah’s website about what’s going on, because 30,000 people had to exit the capitol and go over the border into Cameroon, just in a matter of hours. So there was no food, no place to house these people, and the food that was there, the prices went up really high. So we were able to raise, through friends and family, just through the PayPal site about $7,000.00. And I would wake up every morning and go to the Western Union at Hy-Vee on Collins Road and wire my brother about $990.00 at a time. He’d go to the little village of Kousséri, Cameroon and pick up the money and go and buy food to distribute to the refugees in the area. There were 800 refugees in the church where my brother was, but there were thousands elsewhere. So the United Nations and the Red Cross they weren’t able to get into the city right away. It took them about five or six days. It does affect us, but we’re able, through friends and family and technology, able to send my brother money that week.

Sarah Ndjerareou: And we were on the phone.

Nate Ndjerareou: And we were on the phone, so I’d stay up through the night and talk to him and then I’d sleep during the day. So it does affect us, it continues to affect us, because you never know what’s going to happen.

Sarah Mdjerareou: We were able to even get on You Tube and watch videos of other people were doing of different things and so it’s not like it used to be. When I was a kid, when I was a kid living in Africa, we would go to somebody’s house who had a big old radio and they would have the time all set up. My grandparents would go somewhere and they had a ham radio and they would talk to each other. That was about the closest we could call back and forth. A phone call when we were living in Africa, for 10 minutes, would be like $100.00, whereas now it’s changed so much, that you know e-mail and phone and all the different things. The majority of people in Africa have cell phones now. Cell coverage is all over the place.

Nate Ndjerareou: So, I was able to conference my brother in who was in Cameroon, my dad who was stuck in Madagascar at the time, my mom was in Dallas, we had friends in Europe, and we could all be on the same call, at one time, just to try to coordinate what we were going to do, try to figure out what was happening because, it happened so quickly that the entire family was spread out. So we didn’t know where my grandmother was, we didn’t know where my mom’s brothers and sisters were, because it just happened so quickly, that it took a couple of days to account for everybody.

Sarah Ndjerareou: But everybody was safe.

Nate Ndjerareou: But everybody was safe. So it does affect our family. I am a news junkie, international news. I watch the news all the time, because even my company is based out of the United States, but we have people in the Ukraine, we have Israelis, we have Europeans, so I’m always interested in the news, because anything that happens in the world can affect our business right away. It’s just not Chad, it’s, every part of our lives is connected.

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Katie: Do you guys have any discrimination on the road or anything?

Nate Ndjerareou: I have never personally, consciously, recognized discrimination. I don’t know if that.....I don’t look for it, so if it happens I may not see it. We were raised by my parents and by Sarah’s parents not to look at color and not to let color define how we react, or how we act towards other people, just to take them for people and that’s worked pretty well. I’ve seen it in other ways with other people. I don’t know, if it’s happened, I don’t recognize it right away. I just kind of keep moving forward. I truly believe that you can work through some of these things and have minds changed. I’ve been in situations where friends of mine have had their lives changed about other people groups, because they’ve gotten to know people groups. I had a friend in college tell me, that I was the first black person he’d ever meant and because of that it had totally changed his perception of black people. My high school in Seattle, my high school basketball coach sat me down one day and said, Now that he’s met me, he would have no problem allowing a black people into his home. Things like that.

Sarah Ndjerareou: Right now it’s just a lot of surprise that there are black people in Iowa. It’s the joke that you hear the most, because Nate travels all over the place and he has his Iowa thing. It’s just changing people’s perceptions about Iowa, that we’re here. People always ask, “Why Iowa?” We get that question a lot. So we’re always able to say that Iowa is a wonderful place to be and to raise a family and we are very thankful for the kind people that are here and the roots that we’ve developed here.

Katie: You keep talking about your daughter, what is your daughter’s name?

Sarah Ndjerareou: Good question! She is Sofia Nerallel Ndjerareau and she is three and a half.

Katie: What does Nerallel mean?

Sarah Ndjerareou: Nice. Nerallel was the name that was chosen by Nate’s parents in the Ngambay tradition and it means rejoice in Ngambay. She was named after Nate’s grandmother.

Kaite: What is your happiest memory?

Nate Ndjerareou: Sofia being born is probably one of the highlights. It was, I don’t know how to explain it. It was very happy. It changes your life, but more than you would know.

Sarah Ndjerareou: When my daughter was born is obviously one of my happiest and you see your parents smiling in a whole ’nother way. One of my favorite memories was my first Christmas when I was a kid, I was probably about your age and I was living in Swaziland, Africa which is a little country, right on the border of South Africa. And I had loved it cause there were swimming pools and monkeys and it was a really exotic experience until Christmas rolled around. And it was my first, since it’s in the southern hemisphere, December is summertime, so it’s the hottest it was going to be. And you’re putting up my American Christmas tree and getting out my American stockings and I want to wear a sweater and I wanted it to feel like Christmas used to, ’cause I started to get really homesick. And it was hot! So you didn’t want to do any of those things. I remember being really upset and really homesick and really mad and I remember it was Christmas Eve and I stomped my foot and I said one of the first prayers I ever remember saying. And I said, “God, if you’re there, you should make it feel like home.” And about a couple of moments latter this huge wind blew through all the open windows. And it started to rain and we had a metallic tin roof, so it was really loud so you couldn’t hear anything and the big wind had knocked over our Christmas tree. So the whole family comes running in and we picked up the Christmas tree and we picked up all the ornaments. We all kind of gathered in the back room and that wind and the rain had cooled everything down and it got really quiet. We were all standing there in front of the Christmas tree and we turned and we looked out into the back yard and the whole back yard was white and sparkly. Because in about those 10 minutes it had hailed and it was ice all in the backyard for about a half an hour, then it all melted. But that was one of the, I got my Christmas, I got my white Christmas and that was the first time for me in my faith that I realized God’s listening to me. That’s one of my favorite memories from life.

Katie: Why did you guys choose your jobs?

Nate Ndjerareou: I didn’t really choose my job as much as I stumbled into it. I did it mostly for the money. In all seriousness, I thought I wanted to be an economist, so I was going to school for that. But my dad made a bargain with me saying, “If I put you through college, you have to put your younger sister through college, who’s coming up behind you.” So I looked for the most practical thing that I could do that would get me a job after college and allow me to pay for that. So, I didn’t want to just do computers because I wasn’t really into just computers. I wanted to really do something that had to do with business that would engage me with people. I found MIS, which is Management Information Systems, which is a business degree with IT technology. So I did that. Yeah, I stumbled into it, I was decent at it, I wasn’t the greatest. I could pass my classes. I found a job which I liked and it’s a big enough career where you can move in a lot of different areas. So I really just stumbled across it, I really didn’t choose it, pick it out of the hat.

Sarah Ndjerareou: I discovered in all of my travels, if you have ever been somewhere that when you are telling a really good and everyone’s eyes are on you, that I loved that feeling. I loved the feeling of storytelling and teaching through storytelling and when you travel all over the place you learn all sorts of different things. I couldn’t necessarily take people that I knew with me to Africa, so they could experience the sights and the sounds and the smells, but when you tell a good story that you teach them and you bring some of that experience back and you give that to them. I’ve always loved story and I’ve loved what’s come from that, but by being a writer I can continue giving those experiences to new people and kind of build a bridge.

Katie: Do you guys like to travel?

Nate Ndjerareou: Yeah, it’s in our blood. We have been doing it since before I can remember, I was traveling. And so it allows you just to see the world and connect with other people. I admit I do it a little too much right now. It’s a lot, but I couldn’t imagine a life without some type of travel, just because I moved away from Africa when I was three and moved back when I was twelve. I spent the next four years bouncing around West Africa and Europe and then came back to the States. I went to three different high schools in three different countries. So it’s kind of in my blood. The toughest time for me were the years I spent in Cedar Rapids working when I wasn’t traveling. That was very difficult. We love it and we’re just trying to find the right balance in our lives, to continue to make it a part of our lives.

Katie: Where have you guys traveled so far?

Nate Ndjerareou: As a family or individually?

Katie: How about both?

Nate Ndjerareou: Both? As a family we’ve of course, _____, since Sofia was born we’ve been to Los Angeles together. We’ve been to Mexico. We spent the summer in San Francisco. We travel of course by road all over the United States.

Sarah Ndjerareou: Florida, Dallas.

Nate Ndjerareou: Florida, that’s right. I don’t, I’m not sure, I don’t think we went to Dallas with Sophia yet, but we’re going to Dallas next week, as a family for a wedding. Individually, France, Chad, Burkina Faso, West Africa, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Le Chere, Western Africa region, then Canada.

Sarah Ndjerareou: I’ve never been to Western Africa. I grew up in Southern Africa and Eastern Africa and then my first memories were in Monte Carlo, France as a kid. Then I was in Siberia and Russia and the Ukraine, before I meant Nate. Then when we got married, Nate was getting his green card and when he got his green card, a couple years ago? Then, we celebrated and went to Paris together.
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Katie: How did your family members feel about the jobs that you did?

Nate Ndjerareou: My dad, the only person I ever talked to about my initial career was my father. He just didn’t understand what it was, like most people didn’t understand, what MIS really was. He was supportive. He was curious at first and he was supportive. Then when I took this current job that I have now, I talked to him about it and he was very supportive, which was good. There wasn’t really much controversy with what I’d chosen as a career. My father and mother have always been supportive, even if they didn’t understand, so.

Sarah Ndjerareou: I used to be a cross cultural teacher. And then when I started writing, it was my parents encouraged me and helped me edit my first book. Then that became my first foray into writing. And that was published about the time that Nate and I got together, so, yeah, our families have been very supportive. Our family is very supportive right now. We’re renting out our house and living with my family and they have a little apartment in the basement, so that we can travel together and that we can go home. Nate hasn’t been back to Africa in fifteen years and neither have I. So this will be a big deal for us to go. Having my family give up Christmas with us and all of that, they’re being very good about that. Because they’ve lived overseas, they understand you can go a long time without seeing family and friends and they’re being very supportive so we can make this trip and go and spend some time.

Dante Benjegerdes: What was it like traveling so much as children?

Nate Ndjerareou: I enjoyed it. I had no problem. I actually looked forward to it.

Sarah Ndjerareou: You love airplanes.

Nate Ndjerareou: Yeah it was airplanes and just doing something different. I can’t remember a time where I had an issue with traveling. Some kids do; some of my siblings did. I actually spent seventh grade being homeschooled and traveling with my father the entire year. I enjoyed it and that’s why I’m addicted to it now.

Sarah Ndjerareou: It stands out some of your biggest memories are the smells and the sounds and the different languages. It’s the most intense way to really walk in another person’s shoes. You understand people on a very different level. And it also makes you realize how much we have in common. If you can, we’ve seen our daughter make friends on the playground with people from, with little kids from all different ages and nationalities and she’s discovering that kids are kids wherever you live and they like to laugh, they like to kick a ball. And I think it’s finding those universalities and having those common experiences that are really thrilling and waking up to a new experience, can make you really feel alive and make you feel you are a part of something.

Ben Toyne: What kind of books do you write and why are you writing?

Sarah Ndjerareou: Sure. Sure. I started my first book that I wrote, was a children’s book about a little refugee boy from the Sudan, because when I was working with Sudanese refugee kids in Chicago, when I was going to school. They were trying to learn English. So I would go to the library and I was trying to find books with little people that looked like them or were the same color or dressed the same and I was having a hard time. So for college I wrote a little story about a little boy that comes to America, and described some of the things that, the experiences that we had both coming and going. Like I remember landing in Chicago when we came home from Africa and I wasn’t used to cold walls. And I wasn’t used to the gray and the color or having to zip up your coat before you put your mittens on. The little stories, I would put my mittens on and then I’d have to figure out how to close my coat. All these little stories that I put into this little refugee boy’s experience and that’s what kind of excited me about writing. Then, I lost a fiancé in college to a traumatic brain injury and so it was writing about those experiences that I put down on paper and that’s why I came back to Cedar Rapids for about six months to write that. It was an amazing experience to be able to write about that and give it to other people to read so that they can, if somebody else is going through something similar, you can kind of speak for them. Or if, you give voice to a lot of feelings in the experience, but there wasn’t a happily ever after in the story, it was just a very, it was like bringing closure to that time in my life and so actually when we got it published, the publisher asked Nate to write the epilogue at the end, kind of write the happily ever after. And the happily ever has come from helping others with the book. That’s been a really neat part of it, but that just got me started on writing and so now I’m hoping to do more about our African experience more of our travels, so that other people can get a view into the world that we live in.

Ben: Do you sell the books?

Sarah Ndjerareou: Hum um. Yep.

Ben: Do they sell very well?

Sarah Ndjerareou: Very well is a good question. I’m blessed to have it be out there. It was picked up by Zondervan Publishing and you can buy it on Amazon or in book stores. It’s not a Harry Potter, that’s for sure, but it’s been a neat experience for me.

Katie: That story, what was the title?

Sarah Ndjerareou: The book was Pieces of Glass and it’s by Sarah Kaye.

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Dante: Did you like homeschooling?

Nate Ndjerareou: That year yeah, ’cause I got to travel with my dad. I don’t know how I would have liked it if I had to continue past the seventh grade. But the reason I was homeschooled was because school in Chad is in French and I didn’t speak French, when I moved back when I was twelve. So I had to learn French and continue school. So we were tutored in French in the evenings by a gentleman that my parents found. Then once I learned the language, then I was sent to France for about six months to really learn the language. I lived with a French family went to school for a while, then went back into, left homeschooling. I liked it for the year that I was homeschooled. I’m not sure I would have liked it if I had to continue homeschooling. I guess I’ll never know.

Dante: How many languages do you guys speak?

Nate Ndjerareou: I speak two and a half. I speak French and English fluently and I understand my tribal language that I grew up with; the tribe I’m from, but I don’t speak it, I’m not as familiar with speaking it. But because when we lived in the United States, my parents would speak Ngambay, which is my tribal language, to us; we’d respond in English. So we grew up understanding it. At least my brother and I, at the time, couldn’t speak it. My other siblings could. Now my older brother Rueben can speak it because he has been living in Chad for the last five or six years. I would suspect if I went back to Chad I would pick it up right away and start speaking it again. I always say I speak two and a half.

Sarah Ndjerareou: I speak one and a half. I’m working on my French; I studied French for a long time and so hoping to gain fluency some day. We’d like to send some time in a place and hopefully to pick it up again when in Chad. It’s interesting though to have them mix, because when you are with his family they’ll mix Ngambay and French together. So the different words; I’ll be able to pick out certain words in French. Then some things completely off and that’s the Ngambay, but it’s a beautiful, Ngambay is a tonal language, which means like Chinese, it’s on different pitches, so it’s almost like sing-songy when you here it together. I can’t wait to really hear it, in its context.

Katie: What is you guy’s favorite thing to do other than travel?

Sarah Ndjerareou: Good question.

Nate Ndjerareou: I like to read. I’m a big reader. Certain TV shows, “The Amazing Race.” Has to do with travel, but I love to watch it. We watch shows. I like to read. I’m not a writer; I don’t write much. I read a lot; a lot of good books. Ironically, traveling is the one thing that allows me to read, because otherwise I’m so busy I don’t have time to do it. So if I am on an airplane I can read. I like to get together with friends when I’m in town. Just talk with friends. Debate, whatever it is. Spend time with family; we do a lot of things. I get to work from home when I’m at home, so that allows me to take some time off during the day and do some family-friend things. I like to do that. Yesterday, I was up at 4:00AM, because I had an international conference call. So I got done with work about 1:00 and I played Wii with my daughter for the next couple of hours. So I enjoy that. I enjoy being able to be flexible that way and just do whatever comes down the road.

Sarah Ndjerareou: We love to play soccer with Sophia or tennis or you name it. She’s pretty athletic and out doorsy. We like the sun and the warm weather coming from Africa. So we love to go to the beach and we’ve gotten to go to a lot of beaches this year. We love the water and snorkeling. But we send a lot of time indoors when it gets cold. But with Sophia we end up sledding and things like that.

Katie: What has been you’re guys biggest accomplishment?

Nate Ndjerreou: From a personal standpoint, it’s been my family for sure, that something in the last few years that has been a big accomplishment. Yeah, I would say my family. It takes a lot of work, but there’s a lot of benefit and a lot of great things that come from that and it’s a lot of fun. And as we hit our stride as a family it becomes even, it just becomes more and more enjoyable. Professionally, it’d be breaking into the international business market. Getting a taste for what that’s like, because it’s way more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. I always had a romanticize view that it was going to be fun and just the best thing in the world. It is fun, but it is difficult and it is quite challenging at the same time. So now that the initial shock has worn off, I’m glad that we were able to break into the international business market.

Sarah Ndjerareou: Yeah, that has been an accomplishment, being a multi-national family. It’s kind of the way I think about it the best. That means that Sofia and I can live and work from wherever Dad is living and working which means only taking one or two toys with her when we go and figuring out the cultures and the customs of where we’re at or finding spaces to play and people to interact with. It’s been a neat challenge. When our parents started their adventure when they had little kids, Nate’s mom came from Africa with three little kids and my mom went to Africa with two little kids. So, we figure if they can do it we can try to do it, that’s been an amazing accomplishment is to get that time together as a family and get to grow as a family. Thank you for having us. Good luck with your work. We look forward to seeing your end product.

Katie: Thank you for coming.

Nate Ndjerareou: You’re welcome.

Sarah Ndjerareou: Thank you.