Longing for a return to good ol’ laughter

LAUGHTERDr Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday
“Hee hee de! Huuri!” This is the sound of laughter that I clearly heard last Saturday at sunset. I was back in the village, picking peas and tomatoes for the evening meal.

This laughter was coming from somewhere along the road that leads to the Catholic Church up the hill near our homestead. I listened again and there was more of the laughter, chikwee. Happy women laughing.

Back here in the village, you still hear loud laughter from men, women and children. They still laugh, though men laugh differently.

When we were growing up in the village, we used to laugh until we cried and the pain in the ribs was unbearable. When the story was funny, we begged the storyteller to please stop for a moment; you are killing us with laughter. Watiuraya nekuseka. It was that laughter from the underbelly.

But we always knew that you do not just break into laughter anywhere, especially in the presence of adults. That was not done. We were reprimanded for laughing loosely.

Some people had the gift of making us laugh. There was one comedian or village trickster called Zungunde who made everyone laugh with his jokes and stories.

Sometimes when we saw Zungunde coming, my mother and all the young women married into our family, varoora, would tell us to leave immediately because in no time at all, Zungunde engaged in funny sexual banter.

He was the family nephew, muzukuru, and therefore allowed to say what he liked to the wives of his uncles.

We were not allowed near the women when Zungunde was ready to dance for his uncles’s wives, vakadzi vana Sekuru vake.

One day we hid behind the anthill not too far from a beer party. We heard the women asking Zungunde to do his dance called “kwave kutamba kwava Zungunde”.

We saw Zungunde gather medium size and small stones. He placed them in a wraparound cloth and tied the cloth around his waist, with the stones hanging quite loosely on his front, like a big pouch of something.

He then started dancing slowly and swinging his bag of stones from one side to the other, thrusting backwards and forwards going towards the women, dancing and singing, “Kwave kutamba kwava Zungunde. Ndikuza . . . ndikuzache. Ndiku za . . .”

There were hysterics of laughter from both men and women. What Zungunde said was not meant for the ears of the young. But we heard it all and held our stifled laughs and ran away.

Later on, we would make stone pouches with the bottom part of our dresses and imitate Zungunde’s dance, gyrating the waists and doing pelvic thrusts like he did. Then we would fall down with laughter.

Although that was many years ago, you can still hear echoes of village laughter bringing memories of that past.

“When did you last laugh like that?” I asked my cousin Piri who was reluctantly picking peas with me in the garden.

“Laugh like what?” She asked me.

I ignored her and asked my cousin Reuben, who was also with us in the garden. Lately, he has started to enjoy coming back to the village often, ever since his return from Australia. He was standing in the corner of the garden, watering the cucumbers and carrots with a hosepipe.

Reuben laughed and said: “Do not get me started on that business of laughter.”

I asked him why. Then he put the hose down and said: “The other day, when I was with the boys drinking kwaZindoga, one guy we call Murehwa said, ‘Hey, varume, my wife has stopped laughing.’ We all looked at him and laughed. But it was not a joke.

“Then he said, ‘Varume, stop laughing. I have a problem in the house. When I met my wife, we laughed at everything. Even silly small things. Now, you hardly ever see her laugh. Occasionally, she might smile. But most times, everything is so serious in our house.’ The other guys gathered around the gango listened to Murehwa.”

“Which Murehwa is that?” asked Piri.

“You would not know him Sis. Just another guy we watch soccer and drink with,” said Reuben.

“Murehwa says his wife does not laugh. Why does he not make her laugh? Or, let me put it this way, does he himself laugh?” Piri asked.

“Sis, this Murehwa was simply telling us a problem in his house. Then we all realised that his problem was not just in his house. Other guys started saying, ah, it’s true, and their wives do not laugh much either,” replied Reuben.

“Because the wives are spending too much time in church talking about sin and death all the time,” said Piri.

We laughed and said Piri was being unfair. Going to church is meant to make you feel happier and share goodwill and joy.

But Piri would not stop there. She said many urban women are going to church, praying more often and forgetting to create time to relax, gossip and laugh. The men who drink beer and watch European soccer are a lot happier because they meet often to talk about soccer and politics.

At this point, Reuben agreed with Piri. He said he goes kwaMereki, just outside the city, to roast meat and meet people. He also goes to another place called kwaZindoga for well-cooked trotters and the special fried concoction of various meats called gango.

In these places, the guys talk about everything and they laugh. They tell stories about their childhood misadventures back in the village, their school days, and what it meant for rural boys to come to the city. There is laughter and humour all round.

Sometimes they joke about the long queues at banks, the economy and international politics. They recently talked about French politics and how a young 39-year-old president-elect (now president) was married to a 64-year-old teacher.

After a good laugh, Reuben and his friends go back home feeling relaxed and ready to face another busy week.

“When I lived in the Diaspora, there was hardly any time to speak in Shona and to laugh. Life was work, work all the time,” said Reuben.

I recalled being in similar situations when I lived in the Diaspora too and did not have anyone to speak Shona with and laugh. Laughter was hard to come by, unless you went looking for it.

But that was before I went on a mission to bring most of my close relatives, sisters, nephews and nieces to Australia. People used to joke saying, “Ah, are you trying to colonise Australia by bringing so many of your tribe here?”

I would say, “No, I am encouraging my people to come here so they can study and find opportunities”. This was true. But another reason for my raising the Zimbabwe flag in Australia was to keep connected to home.

As many of us grew in numbers, we would bring a dish each to my house or Mainini Neria’s house and cook sadza. Then there was so much noise and laughter once we were in one room and Shona was spoken all round.

My Australian neighbours would politely comment about the foreign language, the noise and the laughter emanating from my house. We were happy.

Now that I am back here in Zimbabwe and spending many weekends and other days in the village, I find that down here, despite the hardships, people still tell stories and connect to each other. They still laugh.

Psychologist Paul Ekman says laughing is “a universal indication of happiness or pleasure across all cultures. When we smile, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that produces feelings of happiness… the mere act of smiling causes the brain to release dopamine, which in turn makes us feel happy.”

Professor Lee Berk from Loma Linda University in California wrote that laughter has positive effects on the immune system because it increases the activity of important antibodies and natural killer cells, which are essential in fighting against cancer.

In India, Dr Madan Kataria from Mumbai developed laughter therapy and began a laughter club in 1995. To date, there are 5 000 laughter clubs worldwide where laughter is used as a way to reduce stress.

Recently, a friend from Nyanga told me about going back to his village with his siblings to help his parents harvest maize, kufurura chibage. They told each other stories and laughed as they worked.

He said it was a joyous occasion as a whole group of them moved from one stake of maize to the other while their elderly parents watched. In no time at all, the harvest was done.

Laughter was, and still is, a necessary gift of life. In the serious business of life, we should create spaces that enable us to return more to laughter.

  •  Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic.

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