Looking for a Visa

It is a full house at The Rubber Chicken, ethno-comedy is rife at the venue, and everyone is here for a laugh. Akau Jambo is an award-winning comedian and is a running hit in Melbourne, with sold out shows. He is also the founder of the Juba International Comedy Festival, the first comedy festival in South Sudan.

Akau Jambo is 26 years old and is a South Sudanese stand-up comedian, actor, and activist, who was born in refugee camp in Kenya. He uses humour and political satire to shed light on his trauma while growing up in an overcrowded camp, a place where air drop meant food drop and where everyone was looking for a way out; hence the title Looking for a Visa.

Jambo is a natural comic storyteller - he is subtle, funny, and not overly blunt about injustices nor does he fall into self-preachiness, he connects themes and stories that are non-related with slick ease. He is sharp in his observations along with lashings of irony.

And his formula is his own = combined with some sweet, smoothy suaveness, he fires underhanded comments on “bible bashing” and several contrasting cultural swipes such as his now time in Australia delivered with vivid contrast to life in South Sudan (founded only in 2011). He is unabashedly upfront and hilarious about his country claiming history is currently in the making and everyone back home are “founding fathers”. He knows how to humour his audience and laugh at himself.

It is great to see Jambo’s camaraderie with fellow artists too; he gave a ten-minute slot at the beginning of his show in support of a fellow African-Australian comedian Mark Muo, who offered localised humour about his life on the streets with hard-edged delivery about survival and how to turn a bad situation into a positive gain.

Look forward to seeing Akau Jambo back in Melbourne.

Flora Georgiou

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