Kenya Stands Up and Cheers for New Humorists

Nearly two hours before Steve Muturi told his first joke, the nightclub’s 60 tables were already taken. An hour later, the rows of seats in front of the stage were filled. When it seemed no more people could squeeze in, hundreds still waited outside.

Stand-up comedy has come to Nairobi, and Kenyans aren’t about to let a little discomfort spoil the fun.

The crowd of nearly 1,900 that jammed the nightclub at the Carnivore restaurant hooted the moment Muturi jumped on the stage. He warned them to drive carefully if they planned to attend an upcoming political protest, a rally most assumed would be dispersed by police swinging clubs.

“We don’t need anybody to get hurt on the way there. There will be ample opportunity to get hurt when you are there,” he said.

The crowd broke into deafening laughter.

Such political humor is relatively new to Kenya, made possible by a more relaxed government attitude to criticism.

Comedy is certainly not new to Kenya. Children’s games, bawdy songs and humorous plays are part of traditional entertainment. In recent years, street comedians have acted out skits in return for loose change.

But simply telling jokes in front of a crowd was nearly unheard of before Muturi started the monthly comedy night at the Carnivore in September.

Although the $3 cover charge puts the show out of reach for most Kenyans, the audience has gone from 250 in the beginning to more than 2,000 for some shows, the restaurant says.

Some were curious to see how a man standing alone on a stage could make them laugh with nothing but words.

“I haven’t seen this anywhere before except maybe on the television talk shows,” said Nate Thayan, 28, a lecturer in accounting at Strathmore College. But the jokes on those talk shows, imported from the United States and Europe, just aren’t very funny to Kenyans, he said.

At Carnivore, many of the jokes were about universal things--annoying relatives, cockroaches and failed relationships.

Muturi sang a spoof of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and the delighted crowd joined in for the chorus.

“In your life you have some trouble, when you marry you make it double. Don’t marry, be happy,” he sang.

But jokes about ethnic differences and local politicians marked much of the humor as uniquely Kenyan.

Shabbir Ansari played an interviewer astonished at politician Raila Odinga’s explanation that he is in the opposition because his father was opposition, his grandfather was opposition and his great-grandfather was opposition.

“If you are trying to tell me your father was a thief, and your grandfather was a thief, what would that make you?”

“Oh, then I would be KANU,” he said, referring to the ruling Kenya African National Union party.

Ansari would not have dared tell that joke in public five years ago when criticism of the government often would provoke a visit from police.

Comedians used to send up the powerful for friends and at small parties. Now they do it in front of hundreds of paying fans.

Muturi interspersed an imitation of a Kenyan police officer reading a suspect his rights with a rapid-fire impression of President Daniel Arap Moi explaining those rights out of existence.

He put on glasses and mocked Kenya’s on-again, off-again vice president, George Saitoti, pledging his undying love for the ruling party--after recently being reappointed to his post.

“There are no longer any sacred cows. You can imitate absolutely everybody,” said Ian Mbugua, the host of the show and a veteran actor. “I don’t think we could have picked a better time to introduce stand-up comedy.”

With corruption, poverty and ethnic tensions dogging Kenya, comedy found a ready market, he said.

“People need to let off steam,” Mbugua said. “People need to forget their problems and laugh.”

In the dark, cavernous club, customers pressed up against the stage and overflowed into an outdoor garden. Many fans had to watch on closed-circuit television at bars scattered throughout the club.

The audience was a rarely seen cross-section of Kenya’s stratified society--black, white and Indian Kenyans and foreigners sending out huge waves of laughter, the approval of an audience seeing something unique.

Ansari’s humor targets all ethnic groups.

He tells jokes about Kenyan Asians, whose ancestors came from the Indian subcontinent; about Kenyan tribes that believe in ghosts; even about the pope, not usually a topic of Kenyan conversation.

Ansari, the 47-year-old general manager of a tour company, was sitting in the audience at one of the early comedy shows when a call went out for volunteers to tell a joke. Now he is a regular performer.

But few are following his lead.

Muturi has put ads in newspapers looking for fresh blood. He appeals to audience members to try the craft. But with no tradition of stand-up comedy, Kenya has a very small pool of entertainers to draw on.

And despite the big audiences, only a few clubs and hotel lounges are experimenting with comedy nights, leaving professional comedians searching for places to perform, said Dominic Kibuika, leader of the Black Angels, a well known group of street comedians.

The troupe recently began performing its rapid-fire Swahili banter at Carnivore.

“On the street, I can’t make good money, but when I come here, they know what comedy is. They know what art is,” Kibuika said.