By Pkemoi Ng’enoh
Kenya: Back in the early 90s, ‘Kiini Macho’ was the in-thing.
Fans, mostly kids, were glued to the Hindu TV magician who always left them breathless.
His name remained ‘Magic Man’, as no-one knew the tricks he used to move kids in the programme aired by the country’s only television station, KBC.
Johnny Rodrigues has been in the non-competitive magic world for 45 years, as he told The Counties. The moment he took to the stage to entertain kids at a function in Ngong Race Course, the noisy background went mum as the audience including adults began whispering the old man’s ‘magic’ words ‘Rambo, bambo boom boom’.
Born in Nairobi central, his career started as a hobby but with time he realised it could put food on his table.
“The popular lines ‘Rambo, bambo boom boom’ are just words I coined to make the audience think these are really ‘magic words’. So far I cannot point out any of my best shows because whenever I take to the stage I leave my audience amazed,” he said.
He explains, “Majority cannot differentiate between magic and witchcraft. I don’t use black magic in my performances.” Once in a while though, the magic backfires but Rodrigues says this is part of the show because his role is to make people laugh.
“I meet a lot people who tell me they used to watched my programme when they were kids,” he says. He says ‘Kiini Macho describes his career better since it means hypnotism, which he says, is a trick that aims to blind the audience through his performance.
Now that he has retired from the non-pensionable magic world, Rodrigues still performs in private functions and for charity causes. Asked to share his tricks, he says magicians have their code of conduct and sharing them with anyone will mean he has gone against them. He is currently training one of his aides who has shown interest in trying when he retires.
