Delicate Humor of a Local Suburban Mind
essay by Lisa Sammoh
Humor is the persevering backbone of my community. The dirt-ridden and congested streets are filled with people of varying degrees: tall, short, thin, fat, big-mouthed, bottomed-out people. They move around with sweaty brows and cracked lips ready to free the first chuckle of the day. When a street boy makes a joke, the women shake their jellied bosoms and the men wag their creased fingers.
A local street vendor once said he had a funny story to tell me. He said he had heard of a man who tried to hang himself with a holed bed-sheet after his estranged wife stole twenty dollars and an old mattress. The man couldn’t die, so the District Court slapped a fine and sent him to prison for two years. When the vendor stopped talking, I asked him what the punchline was. Because surely a story about a man attempting suicide after his ex-wife stole everything he had should be sympathized with more. But he said it was a funny story, so I suppose it was so.
I have only been back home from college for a few months. When a relative or family friend I haven’t seen in a while greets me, the first thing they say is, “You have gotten fat. You are starting to look like a mother. We will probably be marrying you off in the next year or so.” As I bare my teeth nervously, I try to rack my brain for any correlation between body size and marriage. As my heart rate starts to dip a little and hot tears threaten to slide down my burning cheeks, I marvel at how such little words could change my mood for the rest of the week. But I choose to remain silent because blissful ignorance goes hand in hand with ill-directed affection.
The homes that our fathers built for their families are compacted together by shared brick walls, barbed fences, and intimate voices. Everyday at eight in the morning, I can hear the smack of a slap over the fence, as a mother hits her two-year-old boy for spilling tea from a cup. And sometimes at one in the morning, I can hear the mother’s face being bashed against the wall by a raging fool of a drunken father. I hear it, my parents hear it, and every neighbor down the street listens to her piercing scream. Rather than intervene, we sit in clusters of two and gossip about what kind of abuser the little child will turn out to be when he becomes an adult.
These are the funny stories of my community. Their humor is dry and dusty as it is swept under the rug for fear of feeling uncomfortable. If we choose to face our weaknesses, then the pervasive amusement will slowly cower and die away. We should learn to join in the laughter, but only after listening to what is truly being said.
A local street vendor once said he had a funny story to tell me. He said he had heard of a man who tried to hang himself with a holed bed-sheet after his estranged wife stole twenty dollars and an old mattress. The man couldn’t die, so the District Court slapped a fine and sent him to prison for two years. When the vendor stopped talking, I asked him what the punchline was. Because surely a story about a man attempting suicide after his ex-wife stole everything he had should be sympathized with more. But he said it was a funny story, so I suppose it was so.
I have only been back home from college for a few months. When a relative or family friend I haven’t seen in a while greets me, the first thing they say is, “You have gotten fat. You are starting to look like a mother. We will probably be marrying you off in the next year or so.” As I bare my teeth nervously, I try to rack my brain for any correlation between body size and marriage. As my heart rate starts to dip a little and hot tears threaten to slide down my burning cheeks, I marvel at how such little words could change my mood for the rest of the week. But I choose to remain silent because blissful ignorance goes hand in hand with ill-directed affection.
The homes that our fathers built for their families are compacted together by shared brick walls, barbed fences, and intimate voices. Everyday at eight in the morning, I can hear the smack of a slap over the fence, as a mother hits her two-year-old boy for spilling tea from a cup. And sometimes at one in the morning, I can hear the mother’s face being bashed against the wall by a raging fool of a drunken father. I hear it, my parents hear it, and every neighbor down the street listens to her piercing scream. Rather than intervene, we sit in clusters of two and gossip about what kind of abuser the little child will turn out to be when he becomes an adult.
These are the funny stories of my community. Their humor is dry and dusty as it is swept under the rug for fear of feeling uncomfortable. If we choose to face our weaknesses, then the pervasive amusement will slowly cower and die away. We should learn to join in the laughter, but only after listening to what is truly being said.
About the writer
Lisa Sammoh is a recent college graduate from Tanzania. Her works have been published in online literary journals like Mary Baldwin University’s Outrageous Fortune and Five:2:One’s #thesideshow. Her recent interests include cooking and baking, listening to what someone is really trying to say, and convincing her family to get a puppy. She also hopes to spark a conversation about mental health and illnesses in Africa.
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