The therapeutic role of Somali humour in digesting military humanitarian intervention

Abstract

Despite its humanitarian rhetoric, the US-led UN military humanitarian intervention in Somalia (UN Operation Somalia, 1992–1995) involved high levels of violence against the recipient population generating long-term psychosocial effects on the Somali people. While survivors’ personal narratives of the intervention display numerous symptoms of undigested pain, Somali oral literature performs an important role in healing individual and collective wounds inflicted by the violent past. In line with the traditional roles and functions of the Somali oral literature, psychosocial consequences of UN armed involvement in Somalia (UNOSOM) intervention are mainly addressed through oral verses and poetry. Some elements of the violent past, however, are engaged with by means of humorous oral prose. Focusing on the intervention-related humour appearing in the drama Refugee Life created by the Somali artist in Dadaab refugee camps (Kenya), the therapeutic potential of laughter in digesting some aspects of the intervention-violence that are otherwise difficult to process are explored in this article.