WET HUMOUR

"... when you have moved to a new country, humour isn’t one of the things you think you are going to struggle with at all. "

“We’ve been waiting for you for thirty minutes.”

The bus driver had said it with all the seriousness of someone delivering world-altering news. It was said with the authority and cadence of a judge delivering a life sentence. It was said with an edge of anger and annoyance that is hard to fake unless you are an Oscar-winning actor, or possibly, my grandmother.

But, I knew that it was a lie.

As a perennially punctual person who detests the idea of anyone being annoyed at me for keeping them waiting, I have a habit of arriving everywhere exactly on time. I calculate times in my head, wake up before my alarms for fear of missing them, and have to work really, really, really hard to be late—which usually doesn't even work. So, I knew that in no way, shape, or form was I late for this bus tour around Connemara. It left at 08:00 on the dot. When I booked the tour online, the website had told me to meet the bus at 07:45. I arrived at approximately 07:44 and climbed the steps onto the bus shortly thereafter. I was right on time.

But, seeing that, somehow, everyone on this plus-minus-fifty-seater bus had gotten there before me, hearing that I was half an hour late from an authority figure, and being generally desperately afraid of people thinking that I am the Worst TM, in that moment I fully believed that I had miscalculated the timings so horrendously that I had kept all these nice, touristy strangers from getting on with their sight-seeing trip around one of the most beautiful places in Ireland.

My default, after the bus driver delivered this news to me, was to immediately profusely apologise. Of course I was in the wrong; he of all people should know when the tour he was conducting was to start.

But just as I went to open my mouth to beg forgiveness, I stopped myself and I thought about it a little bit more.

I ran back through everything I had planned for: wake up at 06:30, get the bus to town at 07:00, arrive in town at 7:20, get a tea and pastry at 07:30, walk to the bus stop in anticipation of arriving at 07:44 (with some intentional dilly dallying so I didn’t arrive too early). I thought about my history with timekeeping. I thought about how, in the full year that I had been in Ireland, a similar way of joking had completely flown over my head more often than not.

All of this evidence made me sure that I was not late.

“No I’m not!?” I said. A bit awkward and fumbling reply, that definitely was said with a degree of confusion and possibly an audible question mark—because my voice had not got the memo of my new-found confidence—but it broke the spell. The bus driver laughed and the whole bus laughed and I laughed (in a nervous way), and I was told to take my seat. And then we all got on with it and spent a few hours marvelling at the beauty of the Irish landscape.

But, I was embarrassed for a good portion of the trip. While listening to some very interesting and moving historical and geological facts about this new country I was living in, I was also feeling a bit stupid and out of place.

It’s hard to move to a new country.

I grew up in South Africa, which is literally and figuratively a world apart from Ireland. There are a million differences between the two places. I knew that I would be out of my element and so I had read and researched all that I could before moving. I had tried to prepare myself for the challenges I would face by learning all I could about how to get a PPS number and how to set up a bank account and how to get around on public transport and how to deal with the never-ending rain. I read books by Irish authors and I googled pictures of Ireland and I watched movies set in Ireland. I really tried, in the limited capacity I was able, to set myself up as best as possible to make sure that this move was a wholly positive one. That it would be the place that I felt I fit in—something I categorically did not feel about South Africa at the time.

But, there were about a million things that I could never prepare myself for in Ireland that made me feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb. And one of those things was humour.

It doesn’t sound very important in the grand scheme of things. Humour is humour, right? Someone says something funny, and then people laugh! Simple as that. But, when you have moved to a new country, humour isn’t one of the things you think you are going to struggle with at all.

I’ve read a couple of articles about South African humour and Irish humour, and it seems that a common thread between the two is that both cultures use humour as a way to deal with tough times. Both South Africans and Irishmen can appreciate the joy in the bad, and they can bring the joy if there is nothing to be joyful about. Additionally, both South Africa and Ireland have had tumultuous histories, which have featured a host of issues from oppression to economic hardship. So, in order to cope with these struggles, both cultures have turned to humour as a mechanism to keep on floating when the whole country was in a state of sinking.

“Dry” humour is the technical definition.

It is when someone delivers a joke in a neutral, dead-pan way. Often, these kinds of jokes are comedically funny due to the delivery being at odds with the statement itself. I would say that it is within the same family as dark humour—they’re estranged sisters, perhaps. You know dry humour when you hear it.

The point is, I have grown up in a country where dry humour, ironically, overflows. A slogan for a certain South African brand of cider comes to mind: it’s dry, but you can drink it; accompanied with an advertisement that is on-the-nose-funny. And, without tooting my own horn, I am pretty fucking funny; certainly the funniest person I know. I can take a joke and I can give a joke.

But, when I came to Ireland, I strangely felt like I was the joke. Like I was being punished for not being from here, from not getting why it was funny to toy with people in a slightly negative and, dare I say, nasty way. It has made me feel stupid, silly, like (you may see where I am going here) a dummy. And even after almost two years of living here, the moment someone says something like “we’ve been waiting for you for thirty minutes” or “cop on to yourself” or “no, you can’t sit with us,” I feel that all over again.

I’ve thought about it a lot, too. Why would it be so different from one place to another? Honestly, I haven’t really figured it out, I don’t think I will any time soon. And, my only current working theory is the weather—the perpetual rain and grey skies have certainly made me less emotionally sunny as it were, so I cannot imagine what a lifetime of it would do. But, while I may never know the answer (and I don’t think it would be helpful at all if I did), I am glad to say that I’ve gotten better at dealing with it.

For all that Ireland has made me question myself, recognise my differences, and metaphorically and physically made me feel like I am drowning, I also have come to love and laugh at these instances of “wet humour” as I’ve dubbed it. And, maybe it’s possibly rubbing off on me too.

For example, if I were to find myself in the exact same scenario as I was before, where I was getting onto a bus tour to go to Connemara and it was 07:44 and the bus driver said, “We’ve been waiting for you for thirty minutes,” I think my precise and immediate response would be:

“Oh, fuck off.”

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Emily Bagg is a writer originally from Cape Town in South Africa, now living in Galway, in Ireland. She's worked as an editor and copywriter, and is now looking forward to celebrating being TOO LOUD.