Whatever happened to wit?

Recently I was at a party when matters got out of hand and two friends starting arguing, this soon turned to insults and pushing. The insults were in Luganda and Runyankole, the usual vulgar epithets, I intervened on principle. I said if we are no longer refugees and are in our home nation then we should at least have the courtesy to insult each other in our native tongue. At this point the conflict died out because of lack of proficiency in Kinyarwanda I remember a far wittier time, when our grandfathers spoke in riddles and witty retorts with panache. Of course what happens is that our cultures contain their wit in idiomatic expressions, these expressions get lost in time and lose their context. Our culture is not one known for its humour, it is humorous but our humour doesn’t translate well because we take our jokes too seriously and they have to have a moral at the end Being an orally based culture, Kinyarwanda had a rich history of jokes, riddles, tongue-twisters, put-downs and general wit. I just never understood them as a child; the context was just out of place. What makes something funny, is substitution, timing, irony, slapstick, hyperbole and wordplay, it can be a dangerous weapon and change society. Substitution doesn’t work well in Kinyarwanda; our culture prefers order of place so a joke about a waiter running with a millionaires is absurd. For a culture to be funny, it has to allow absurdity, so a joke about Bin Laden going to hell and meeting the devil just doesn’t work. What we do well is what is called ragging or dissing in USA, it is a sight to behold to see my circle of friends all take turns bruising my ego, when it is your turn it is your turn. It is all affectionate teasing, like my friend accused me of eating yeast because my belly was bloating like a loaf. Then there are the failed relationships, fashion sense, anything from your past that will make you cringe. That is friendship, and millions of people live without a circle of friends to make fun of them, to call them out on stupid things and puncture their pomposity. It is funny how certain people can joke about anything when they are close to you. Rwandans have a deeper humour, we do not use humour to break ice so we don’t have ready-made jokes, and our jokes are bespoke to the situation after you know someone quite well. We rarely joke with someone you don’t know well, therefore the jokes are different. Funny how I haven’t even told a joke here and yet this is about comedy and wit, if you want a good Kinyarwanda joke go to a Gusaba and hear witty retorts between old adversaries. To see men put others down without offending honour, insulting with compliments and complimenting with veiled insults, all done in good nature. Ends