MAKING HIS MARK

Bullied because of his vitiligo, Chad spent his childhood trying not to draw attention to himself – now he’s a model

- COLIN HENDRICKS

PLAYING in the sunlight with his friends was a favourite childhood pastime. Like any other pre-schooler, he could play outside for hours without a care in the world.

But when he was five years old, just weeks before he’d been set to start going to school, a “small white dot” appeared on the back of his neck.

The small dot grew and grew. “White liver”, the people around Chad Esau started calling it. That was when the sunshine that had brought him so much joy as a youngster became his biggest foe.

Chad was diagnosed with vitiligo, a condition in which the skin loses its pigment, resulting in white patches on otherwise darker skin. “Suddenly, I couldn’t play outside with my friends anymore. I didn’t understand why,” Chad (22) tells YOU.

After his diagnosis, his mom took him for countless fruitless visits to Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. “The creams and gels the doctors prescribed didn’t work. My skin didn’t improve,” Chad tells YOU in a video chat from a small backroom at GrandWest Casino in Goodwood, Cape Town, where he works.

With his body covered in two-toned skin, he soon realised he was different to his friends. “People started staring,” he says. That was the start of years of bullying – all through his childhood, Chad had to bear his peers taunting him with words like “cow”, “dalmatian” and “spotty”.

“I was called names. Once, someone even slapped me in the face at school because of my skin.”