SHAPHII Omary is a gifted mimic and can imitate a duck and quack like one. He can hiss like a snake, bellow like a cow and bleat like a goat. Most importantly, he can mimic a celebrity and leaders or any other eminent persons in the country.If he could speak English with American accent, he is sure he could mimic the US President Barack Obama like Obama’s identical twin brother. “That’s why I want to improve my English, learn some French and even Arabic to widen the scope of my work,” he quips.“If you want to act realistically, know the language well. Do not make a fool of the people.” Mimicking people is indeed Shaphii’s work which earns him his livelihood. Like other parts of drama, he sees it as a potentially big employer of the youth.
Last Monday Shaphii visited the ‘Daily News’ newsroom along Mandela Highway in Dar es Salaam and electrified the scribes therein with his mimicking of ex-President Jakaya Kikwete just to illustrate the humour of the industry.
He rounded off his illustrative short show with another mimic of President John Pombe Magufuli. Many were impressed. “That was really good. He is marvelous,” said Henry Lyimo, a sub-editor with the Daily News.
There are a couple of mimics in the country, but Shaphii appears to be the most shining. Another staff member of the Daily News Nasongelya Kilyinga thinks Shaphii is the best. “He mimics Dr Jakaya Kikwete best of them all,” says Kilyinga.
Late the previous week Shaphii had been with former President Dr Kikwete at the Hyatt Regency, the Kilimanjaro Hotel at a ceremony a national artiste Mrisho Mpoto was being made TACAIDS’ Ambassador in the country.
When mimicking a personality, Shaphii does it so well that the difference is in his physical difference. A graduate of Mzumbe University with Public Administration and Management, Shaphii began practising his artistic talent when he was a small boy at school.
What really motivated him? “As a child I loved to make people laugh with jokes, funny stories and the like,” he says. Although his talent transcends the boundary between animal sounds, he prefers mimicking human beings because, he says, he likes to pass on a message. At Mzumbe University the talent enabled him to make friends, who invited him to various students’ functions as the MC.
“The work not only endeared me to most as my colleagues, but also earned me some cash that I used in my educational needs,” he explains. Shaphii’s face brightens with pride when asked to speak of rewards of his talent. He smiles coyly and says if it were not for the talent he does not think he would have rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty of the nation.
“Because of the talent I have met many big people and visited every region except four in the country,” he explains. Nevertheless, the bantamweight young man sees a brighter future ahead and has no doubt he will sooner than later be to the regions of Mara, Sumbawanga, Kigoma and the other one he could not immediately remember.
Shaphii is encouraged by the way people accept him wherever he goes and has no doubt that he enchants them. “If Dar es Salaam residents think I am good, in other regions they think I am marvelous,” he says.
“I literally mesmerised people in Mtwara just recently with my talent so much that they asked if I had something in my throat which enabled me to change my voice the way I did.” Shaphii is a child in a family of 13 children in all.
His mother, a second wife to his father Omary, had only two children, he and his elder brother Rahib, a soldier with the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces (TPDF).
Shaphii was born on March 17, 1987 and hails from the Zigua community in Tanga where he was born and lived for the first seven years of his life before his father brought him to Dar es Salaam where he began his schooling.
His father died just when he was completing his University studies in 2012, forcing his elder half-sister to take over his educational cost. His relatives, except his father, did not approve of his art of mimicking and strongly discouraged him from practising it as an occupation. But he kept at it and in his Ordinary Level at Southern Island Mbeya he was awarded a certificate in Drama because of excellent mimicking.
“It was the first and the last certificate of its kind at the school,” he explains. His relatives had hoped that after completing his university studies he would get a white collar job in an office with an air conditioning system and an imperial desk bedecked with some phones and a state-of-the-art computer. Instead, he had become an artiste, mimicking people. They were disappointed.
But not one of them could convince Shaphii to change his mind from a preoccupation after his own heart and he took to mimicking people since he left university. For now though, he does the work mostly as a hobby, more or less. Soon after completing his degree in 2012 through 2014 he did a stint with Family Health International 360 (FHI 360) as a coordinator, but whenever opportunity allowed, he entertained people with his mimicry.
“I played the part of passing on a significant health message,” says Shaphii. Mimicking may be so interesting that some people would rush to it, but its hardest part is mimicking a personality the first time.
It is not easy to foretell what the reaction of the personality will be and Shaphii admits he climbs the stage with a kind of anxiety on such occasions. When he imitated Dr Kikwete the first time in the absence of the former president, but in the presence of his wife Lady Salma, he was at a loss whether he would be offending the x-first lady or not.
As he mimicked the ex- President people cheered wildly, but the former first Lady apparently remained impassive, keeping a straight face. Shaphii was confused. Was the ex-First Lady offended? he asked himself. What followed after the performance reassured Shaphii.
“We later shook hands warmly,” he says. Even the other day in Dar es Salaam at the TACAIDS function a man called him after his dramatic performance and after learning about his academic standard of education, advised him to look for a different job in some office.
“This work is beneath you,” said the man. “It is not for you.” Such people are just part of the problem in what Shaphii means to turn into a fully fledged profession. They discourage him and he thinks their reaction to artistic talents is not a progressive response and ought to change for the good of young people talented with dramatic gifts. Shaphii plans turning mimicking in the country into an industry.
“I mean to open my office and train other youths to do what I do,” he explains. “There are many youths gifted in this art. We only need to be organised.’ However, he expects the road to success to be tough because artistes in the country are taken too lightly.
In Kenya, he says, his counterparts are valued and often enough do get formal invitations. Such formal disregard notwithstanding, Shaphii is determined to soldier on.
Acting has its inviolable pride that has earned him the nickname of Dr Mfyuzi. It is also a good source of income. Locally, Mfyuzi sees no significant threat in the near future because his competitors imitate only people - leaders, but the field is wider.
“I imitate both the common and the eminent like Anna Makinda and animals too,” he says. His biggest challenge, he adds, remains lack of foreign languages, but his proudest mimic is that of a cat. “I think I do best the miaw.”
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