Fuuny characters, that i have been making money out of!
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The desert ship aka the humpee
My work is interesting! And being in the business of making kids happy is a serious business lol - i have been doing this for quite some time now and you know what they say especially if you have been doing something for a long time, it's hard to differentiate you and what you love doing. Sometimes i find my self making weird funny faces alone and i dont even realize 😂.
This especially happens on one of those days you are in a maze, trying to find balance and you are alone in your mind thinking to yourself - could my life have turned better if this and this happened? Well, life never prepares you for anything, at least not for "normal" people like us! You go to school with all these expectations on your mind jumping on ideas like a butterfly to a flower only to realize that you really don't have a plan!! I always wanted to be an engineer, then a doctor, then a banker, then a lawyer and the list was long - who would have thought i would become an kids Entertainer? It never crossed my mind, infact i never thought such things existed but now that i am here - i try to make the best out of it.
It's not hard to imitate a camel, it's one of the strongest tamed animal that helps man in going around his duties;
- It helps in cultivation.
- in carrying heavy loads
- in transportation
- in milk
- others use it for meat
It fascinates kids and adults alike, its size is intimidating but its cool and majestic. Putting all these in a costume is fun but very tiring because you will carry kids around all the time and one or two adults will want to make fun of you while your utmost goal will be to mantain cool and keep it energized.
Mr Kukuu
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Kuku is a swahili name for chicken, its probably one of the earliest domesticated fowl. It's loved by all people of the world, i actually think that all meat lovers in the world has had a taste of this delicious delicacy - you can tell by the number of all fast food joints in the world. There is a certain community in my country that loves chicken so much, they have been nicknamed the "ingoho" (chicken) nation.
It's therefore only fair, costume makers considered it to entertain kids all over the world. And they love it, this is a pretty clever bird that spends most of its day dusting the sand looking for food and staying warm or cold depending on the Season. It becomes hard trying to imitate this on this concrete jungle and it looks kinda dumb doing it when you eventually come around a heap of soil!
While we try as much as possible to train people how to imitate the actual behaviour of the character in the costume it dawns on some that it's not normally easy as it may seem to be!
The Gang
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Some times we just load them up all together, just as the client requires - and it's such a happy day to see that these animals can co exist for kids fun sake but it limits all the fun they would otherwise experience for certain mix ups, say like tom and jerry or tom and rufus or even perhaps jerry and simba (remember the story of a thorn on simbas paw). What im trying to say is that you can create a storyline out of a well thought mix up and therefore maximising the fun. Some times the costume wearers forget that jumbo the elephant is deathly scared of the little Jerry and misses out big creating funny skits out of it!
Artist
It all boils down to passion and interest, when you are interested you give your best but when you are not, you do it for the day to end. We have alot of uninterested youth, not creative just bored to death with this line of work - the most that i have crossed in the field were just getting it done to be paid and the results were awful!
Art has not been fully recognised in Africa, most artists here are laughed at and called crazies. You barely make ends meet and it's not a career path you would encourage you child to take. With time things are getting better and were are being set a stage - an audience is slowly but surely trickling in and soon we will have a filled stadium.