Trauma, Comedy, and Uber Drivers

                There are 11 official languages in South Africa, but the one that I ended up speaking the most was the universal language of humour. The optics of my arrival were clear: here comes another White-looking guy from the West to help out some African children. I knew going in that there might be some pushback at SOS Children’s Villages in Cape Town, which houses orphaned, abandoned, and precariously housed youth. However, I was confident that my previous 10 years of working as a comedian would save me in the most challenging times, and it sure did.

Ridesharing Wisdom

                Even as soon as I landed, I saw the importance of humour in my upcoming 6-week journey while looking up my South African Airbnb host’s bio in my Uber there:

“Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.” - Albert Einstein

This definitely set the tone for me throughout my trip here. Many more moments of clarity came through my daily Uber rides back and forth from my Airbnb to SOS Cape Town. I started informally interviewing the Uber drivers about their experience in South Africa (which, of course, was followed by me tipping them generously), and these were my main takeaways from our conversations:

• There’s been lots of government corruption.
• There’s lots of crime.
• Brutal Apartheid policies still continue to influence life for South Africans even in a post-Apartheid context.
• ….and yet, South Africans still find a way to smile and laugh it off.

The number of times that I would be in these Uber rides eagerly learning and hearing about atrocities they experienced and then seeing how the driver would end up laughing it off was more than I could remember. I had one driver tell me that they got they were recently assaulted while carrying a passenger and that they subsequently stole his vehicle. He ended the story by telling me, “But the funny part is, it was a terrible car with lots of problems, so I actually thank them for this” as he started to laugh loudly.

Another driver told me that, following a difficult breakup, he went to the ocean to try and end his life. However, the way he described it was fascinating:

I went in the water right…I was just done with everything…and then a huge wave came up over me…I thought it was going to be the one to take me out…but I had popped back up and my first and only thought was…I can’t let her win, she’s still got some of my stuff! I should at least get that back and then kill myself

He then proceeded to laugh incessantly and, seeing as this story was from many years ago, he seemed to have overcome whatever was ailing him at the time. I was just amazed at how common it was for South Africans to utilize humour to process very painful moments in their lives. Naturally, I started thinking about how this may have shaped the path of famous South African comedian Trevor Noah, who was universally praised by anyone I met in Cape Town.

                I wondered if this was a localized phenomenon in Cape Town, but even in my travels to Johannesburg, located at the opposite end of the country, I witnessed the same thing. I had hired a driver for half of the day to take me around the biggest landmarks in the city, and one of our stops was the Apartheid Museum. This location housed the heart wrenching rise of Apartheid in the 20^th century and its imminent fall. Relating to this stop, my driver, which for context, was Black and had immediate relatives murdered due to the Apartheid regime, shared the following interesting anecdote when I asked him what the funniest thing a passenger has ever told him:

I tell you one thing I still remember…I had this Australian group come who were eager, very eager to learn about South Africa…they were all White…they came in my car and had lots of energy…I dropped them off at the [Apartheid] Museum and when I picked them up, they were NOT happy with me…(doing his best Australian accent) “excuse me driver, this stop was terribly depressing. It was too sad and it ruined our day really—I can’t believe you take people here for your tours, that’s absolutely ridiculous”.

The driver then proceeded to laugh incessantly as he finished his story and kept repeating “that’s absolutely ridiculous”. He would then mockingly say “I’m sorry that you don’t want to know about my family who died because of White people, I’m so sorry we will do better next time” and continue laughing loudly. It was surreal to witness this man, who had suffered tremendously, simply laugh off ignorant views that disrespected people who he had loved and lost tragically. One thing was for sure, the power of South African laughter was evident from one side of the country to the other.

Critical Reflections on the West

                I am forever indebted to the generous stories that I heard from the drivers that I had in South Africa. This is only a snippet of them, but I definitely used this knowledge to approach my comedy-based psychosocial intervention with maximum cultural competency. Within my social circles in Canada, and being a psychology major, it is common for me to be in spaces that talk openly about our feelings without the use of humour. If anything, in my experience, humour is often seen as a way to avoid dealing with pain; however, my time in South Africa shows that that might be a Western-based approach to healing. It is not necessarily true for all cultures; there can be more of a co-existence between humour and trauma, and it might not sit well with most Western mental health practitioners. Nonetheless, I kept this in mind during my psychoeducational group talks with my teen class because, I was cautious of not forcing them to go into headspaces (e.g., getting in touch with sadness) that 1) they were not ready for and 2) that may not be culturally appropriate.

                In short, cultural competencies within a global context can quite literally be the deciding factor whether an intervention succeeds or not. If I simply put headphones in and looked at my phone in my Uber rides over there (which is often the case for me in Toronto), then I would have missed out on all of this rich information to help guide my behaviour with the teenagers under my care. Interestingly, this is only me reflecting on my time in specific communities within South Africa—I can only imagine how different cultures from other parts of the world process psychological pain. I truly do hate how insulated it can feel to be in my bubble in North America; we are taught from an early age to not even look outwards to other countries (unless it’s maybe a Western European one) because we already have all the right answers for everything health related. I really resent how brainwashed that I have been in this regard, and I am beyond grateful to have heard about all of these drivers’ experiences. Not being exposed to other ways of approaching mental health is, as my Johannesburg driver said while mocking those tourists, “absolutely ridiculous”!

Acknowledgements

                I am deeply indebted to the Laidlaw Foundation for trusting me with my ambitious ideas and funding my journey throughout; thank you Susanna Kempe for suggesting that I reach out to SOS. I am also grateful for the University of Toronto Laidlaw Scholars Program in particular for taking care of many details in preparation for this 6-week adventure—your enthusiastic encouragement was so appreciated. I also want to thank Sipelile Kaseke from SOS who responded to my cold email with kindness and curiosity—my project would have never happened if you did not open that email. Thank you as well to Zama Mbele from SOS—you are such a strong, powerful, passionate person who truly cares about children’s well-being; I learned so, so, so much from you. I also need to thank my right-hand man, Alois Aloo, who is the youth coordinator from SOS, who not only came to every single improv class, but ended up performing (and crushing it!) in our final comedy show; you modelled such positive outlooks on my project and set me up for success with the teenagers—it was an honour to work with you, you will always have a brother in Canada now (It was also incredible that we found common ground even though I’m an Arsenal supporter and you’re a Manchester City fan!). Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank all the teenagers who participated in this intervention and constantly made me fall to my knees while uncontrollably laughing—ek is lief vir jou!