In war zones, hospitals, prisons, and refugee camps, laughter often sneaks in as a quiet rebellion against despair. For many survivors of tragedy, a single shared joke has been the difference between sinking into hopelessness and clinging to life. Experts say humour doesn’t erase pain, but it softens its sting, offering both relief and resistance.
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand,” American writer Mark Twain once observed. Decades later, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl echoed that sentiment in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, writing: “Humour, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.”
Across Nigeria, families displaced by insurgency in the northeast tell aid workers that laughter is the only medicine available in overcrowded camps. “When we tell stories and laugh together, even if there is no food, for a moment we feel human again,” said Mariam Usman, a widow at Bakassi IDP camp in Maiduguri.
The science agrees. Research published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine shows that laughter can lower stress hormones, ease physical pain, and even improve immunity. “It’s not just a coping mechanism—it’s survival,” said Dr. Margaret Stuber, a UCLA psychiatrist who has studied laughter among trauma survivors.
History is filled with moments where humour lit up darkness. During apartheid in South Africa, comedians like Trevor Noah’s mother used jokes to shield children from fear. “My mother showed me how humour is a form of survival,” Noah wrote in his memoir Born a Crime. Similarly, U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. often used playful wit in speeches to disarm tension and keep spirits alive.
Today, in Gaza and Ukraine, videos circulate of children laughing amid rubble, a haunting reminder that joy refuses to be buried. Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said: “Without a sense of humour, we wouldn’t have survived.”
Yet laughter is not denial. As Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo writes, “We are not weak for finding joy in brokenness; we are stronger because of it.” For survivors, humour is the thin line between despair and resilience, a declaration that pain may wound the body but not the human spirit.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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