Laughter and Scars

What’s the thing that consistently causes the most laughter in social meetings? Facial marks. Have we ever told you about the facial marks of the different tribes that we live with? It is outlawed now for hygiene and unity’s sake, but people over the age of 25 were given facial scars as infants, which mark the sub-group that they come from in their ethnicity. Some have many lines covering the cheeks sort of in the shape of a mango. Others have a single diagonal mark. Some have small curved lines coming out of the sides of their mouths. Women often have smaller more delicate marks in various box or triangle shapes at the sides of their eyes. 

Where the laughter part comes in is that people from certain sub-groups are considered cousins of other sub-groups, and so they have a special “license to tease” each other. Therefore when you meet someone with your "cousins'" facial marks, or have a regular friend with them, there is a lot of good-natured teasing and laughing. This teasing usually comes in the form of claiming that the other sub-group is the servants of your group or that the other group are habitually over-eaters, lazy workers, naïve to the ways of the world, or just in general responsible for most problems.

There’s actually no offense taken by these remarks, but it’s usually the role of the other person to just sit there and smile until everyone has laughed. Then they get to come back with some contrary “wisdom” that it is really the first speaker’s group that has those characteristics, or to trump them with some other more outlandish mis-characterization. This is an interesting way to diffuse some ethnic tension that may have been present more in the past, which kind of reminds me of rival state sports teams that provide a way for blowing off some competitive steam without any serious conflicts (most of the time). I also do a lot of traveling with the national CHE trainer of our partner church, who happens to have very prominent facial scars. This leads to a lot of humorous situations.   Especially when people, usually younger generations not as familiar with the “rules,” call him by the wrong sub-group name and then get an earful about the stereotypes that they are so obviously ignorant about!

A simple diagonal mark.

Two lines coming from the corner of the mouth.

-- El Padre