‘Funny!’ is in the age of the beholder
Self Editor’s Note: A few weeks ago, Our Man in America got on stage to tell jokes to his fellow Kenyans. They booed him. A week later when he stood in front of Nigerians to tell the same jokes, they showered him with money. After weeks of gathering pieces of his broken heart, he understands that the rejection by Kenyans had nothing to do with the fact that a prophet is never accepted at home.
THE KENYAN audience was full of young people in their early 20s. To understand why they booed me, I had to look back at my first years in America. I was young, naive and full of misconceptions. At one, two, three, four, even five years I was at the stage in America when I thought that I had hit a jackpot — that I had escaped poverty. I was still converting my hourly wage into Kenyan shillings and — realizing that I earned more than my friends who were doctors in Africa — I thought I was up to bigger things.
At five years in the United States I have seen Africans still wearing a suit to every party — even to a BBQ on the beach — because they think it is the look of success.
My hypothesis was confirmed a few weeks after the performances when I met one of the Kenyans who booed me. I didn’t recognize her, but I knew she was Kenyan because she wore a jacket with the colors of the Kenyan flag. I greeted her in Sheng — the language of the youth — the Kenyan equivalent of Spanglish.
“Sasa?” (What’s up?)
“Poa,” she answered.
She is a student. She’s been in America for two years.
I gave her my business card. I swear the card wasn’t for the potentiality of robbing the cradle. Part of my uncalled for calling is to advise these youths so they don’t spend eight years in a two-year college like I did. I have given dozens of cards to such kids but I’m yet to receive a call asking for help with figuring out things. I suppose — like me — they were taught that there is such a thing as a stupid question.
Never ask for help. Figure out your own crap like everyone else.
“Our Man in America?” she asked after reading my card. “Was that you telling jokes at the Labor Day thing?”
If I hadn’t learned long ago how to handle rejection — creative people must — I would have denied having been anywhere in California on that day.
“Manze, (dude?) you need to stop telling those crazy jokes,” she said, upon my admission that, indeed, I was the unfunny guy everyone booed.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m just trying to tell you guys that life in America is not going to be as easy as you think.”
I told her that, yes, she was likely to excel academically and professionally. African immigrants in America have the highest rate of college degrees, and more of them work in management jobs than the general American population. But I told her that it was going to be harder than she thought.
The Nigerians in my audience knew that. They were mostly people who had been in America for more than 10 years. Like many African immigrants who have been in this country for that long, they have had to suffer financially, physically and emotionally in order to make the top of that U.S. Census chart of achievement. They have sat in their cars and cried at the thought of yet another day of two jobs, college classes and homework, and relatives constantly calling with sob stories.
Hallo! Hallo! Can I speak to My Son in America. He is at work? Good. [Please?] tell him to spend $11 to wire us $3 for cooking oil. Hold on, his sister Kemuma says we’re running low on sugar, too, so make it $5.
But that night — a decade or two later — these former cab drivers, dish washers, pizza deliverers, toilet scrubbers, nannies and security guards were lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, managers and community leaders. Now that they had overcome the pain they went through in their young lives in America, they could laugh.
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Just checked out the stand up. Very good. Thoughtful. Keep it up. The timing and ending very good too. Editor Alfajiri Kenya(Quote) (Reply)