AS THE lights in the cinema go down and the patrons take their seats, the familiar Warner Brothers logo lights up the room and the soundtrack starts. This, however, is no ordinary cinema. The roof is of corrugated tin; the seats are tree trunks. The viewers watch a flat-screen television. As the movie, “Deep Blue Sea 2”, begins, Fred Ndichu, the DJ, starts his work. In a booth with an ancient computer, a wad of qat (a mild amphetamine) sticking out of his rapidly moving mouth, he begins to narrate. “Beautiful”, he shouts in Swahili, as a great white shark tears apart a flailing fisherman on-screen.
Mr Ndichu’s cinema, named the innocuous “Heshima Youth Group” to deter bribe-demanding cops, is in Mathare, a rough neighbourhood of tin shacks in eastern Nairobi. Similar establishments exist across the city, and in some other African countries. At the weekend the shack fills up with men watching English Premier League football. On weekdays it is given over to cinema....Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2HYDJR4
EmoticonEmoticon