Last summer, Carson was out in a Sukuma village with some of the interns when people started telling jokes. Carson sat translating for the interns, all of them dumbfounded when each joke resulted in laughter from the crowd. The jokes were all pretty similar. Here is an example.
A Sukuma guy is on his bike traveling to the next village over when he rides through a clothes line. The line cuts his head off and it goes rolling, but he keeps riding. When he arrives at the village the people say to him, “Your head is gone!” Then he dies. (Cue laughter)
They were a bit baffled by why these stories where so funny and many of them even seemed kind of morbid. One of our teammates had a chance a while later to ask a lady who has lived here much longer than any of us if she had any insight. It turns out that this type of joke is very popular and is about a particular group of the Sukuma people (or a sister tribe?). They are known for being naive and sort of redneck. The idea behind this type of joke is that they are so clueless they could lose their head and still not know they were dead unless someone told them. Still sound strange? Consider the phrase, “She would lose her head if it wasn’t screwed on.” or perhaps the whole “dumb blonde” sense of humor.
I try to remember that story when things in Tanzanian culture don’t make sense to me. A direct translation of what was being said, without the context left us thinking Tanzanians had some really bizarre sense of humor. However, once someone explained the story behind the jokes we were able to not only understand, but even relate them to aspects of American humor.
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