He added that we had no history, because history is driven by reason! Anyway, sometimes when you listen to some of our politicians, you appreciate Hegel.
The French anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl would bluntly add that Africans were pre-logical. That an African’s mind can comfortably accommodate a contradiction, like laughing heartily amid ‘misery’.
Whoever read about the often ignorant and biased stories explorers returned to Europe must have struggled to understand the people from our part of the world. With the racism of the times, it became convenient to jump onto such paradoxes as proof for the mental inferiority of black people.
Little wonder then that even renowned moral philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and David Hume who had never stepped foot in Africa, just like Hegel, would jump onto the racist bandwagon on the basis of secondary accounts.
Then Kant would say of a man that the mere fact that he was black from head to toe was enough proof that he was stupid! Let him come back and say it and see if we won’t break his nose!
Nevertheless, despite all that has been thrown at us – the labels, oppression, and insults – we still find time to laugh, sing, dance, and make merry. It is not to mean that all the vitriol and bad surroundings do not bother us.
We are a stubbornly happy people. This is part of what keeps us going, as we trek through the maladies of dehumanizing treatment.
Last year, the UN’s World Happiness Report indicated that the majority of the least happy countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. The report is based on a consideration of happiness to be the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy.
Their rankings followed six indicators: GDP per capita, life expectancy, social support, trust (or absence of corruption in government business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (measured by donations).
If I was a teacher of logic, this would have served as a good example of missing the point. Which happiness do they measure?
This is how they often wrongly universalize their own standards of value and negatively label us at their convenience – dark continent, primitive, barbaric, uncivilized, underdeveloped, backward, third world, bottom billion, scar on the conscience of humanity…!
Certainly there are a couple of uncomfortable realities around us, but we are ‘happy’ by other means. GDP per capita is not part of our vernacular of happiness, it is snobbish vocabulary.
First, there is always a steady supply of jokes and humour in Africa. We joke about everything, including joking itself.
Just randomly peruse through our Facebook posts and comments, one joke after the other. Check the comments on online newspaper stories; even death news! There is a humorous insensitivity that will beat the seriousness out of anyone.
The other day, on Facebook, Daily Monitor posted some woman’s desperate call for health assistance. Her problem was bad odour after menstruation.
And someone came in with this advice: “It depends on how it smells. If it smells like Beti Kamya’s mouth, then you’re in trouble. However, if it smells like roasted beans, then that’s not a problem. Contact me for further advice”.
Oh dear, not even some respect for our honest minister!
Another one told the poor woman to take a shower with petrol and then light a matchstick to finish the dose. Sometimes you find yourself laughing, even at a toxically-offensive comment.
I won’t forget the fellow that misunderstood my sarcastic article on the cancer machine and he suggested that I should be thrown into a pit latrine! Of all places?
But I laughed so hard, and took offense afterwards. Where our people get these random ideas from baffles me. If these were technological innovations, I wonder where we would have been.
Even at a funeral, we shall always have something to giggle about in-between intervals of sobs. There is often that one or two drunkards that utilize the occasion to dramatically throw in one inconvenient truth after another.
One shouts: “Everyone who slept with Okiror’s widow should now get worried”. Mourners burst out into vainly restrained laughter.
Then the other drunkard quips in crocodile tears: “Hmm, Chairman it is a pity we are going to lose you too. Oh, our dear chairman. I used to tell you. Now see how you are worried!”
Meanwhile, a scuffle has broken out behind the house, someone has been caught sneaking away the legs and ears of the cow that was slaughtered for the funeral.
Don’t mistake us for sadists. You can deny us anything, but not an opportunity to laugh at something. And this is how we also deal with tormentors who happen to be more powerful than us.
Granted the space, we ruthlessly ridicule and teeth at them. This way we cool down the suffocated anger in our hearts. At least this is how I feel after releasing a scathing cartoon.
Without the aid of humour, how else would we bear the weight of the global bad publicity about our continent (thanks to our vampire governments and the cynical international media)?
Our governments must be surprised that we can still laugh despite their committed efforts at keeping us gloomy through their shameless acts and sick service delivery. Shame upon them, stress alone won’t kill us!
jsssentongo@gmail.com
The author heads the Center for African Studies at Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi.
