Kashasha

In 1962, in a girls' boarding school in Kashasha on the shores of Lake Victoria, laughter began without warning. It spread from student to student, then to nearby villages, and continued for months without clear cause or control. What started as a small outbreak of uncontrollable laughter became one of the most documented cases of mass psychogenic illness in modern history. Kashasha follows the events as they unfolded, drawing on medical reports, school records, and eyewitness accounts from teachers, missionaries, and colonial administrators. It examines how stress, environment, and social pressure can shape collective behaviour in ways that defy simple explanation. This is a careful reconstruction of an extraordinary episode, exploring what happened when emotion, context, and human psychology converged in a way that still challenges easy interpretation