Out, on a Movie

I’m seated in this movie theatre in the city of Nairobi, its one of those South African state of the art “Nu Metro” theatres that have sprang up so rapidly in shopping malls across the suburbs over the last 5 years or so. I’m seated next to a pretty girl, fizzy drink and pop corn at hand, sharing laughs over the antics of an undercover transvestite cop, a couple of sizes too large in Big Momma’s House 2 and I’m thinking, life does change…

I’ve always looked forward to an evening out at the movies even when growing up in upcountry Kenya where there were no theatres to think of. Back then, we relied on the free mobile cinema’s famously known as “Watoto kaa chini” (Kids, be seated!). They used to come round once a month on a given day. The movie truck would arrive late in the afternoon at the local soccer field, bringing to an abrupt end activity on the pitch. The crew, with the help of the locals would proceed to set up the screen with the goalposts as masts supporting the ‘canvas screen’ and then wait till dark before rolling out. By then, word will have gone round.

I had been banned from attending the mobile cinema. The movies were known to be strictly “body count” and after I had been spotted horning skills picked up from Rambo-First blood and The Terminator with a wooden gun, the PG rating came into effect. On very rare occasions, my parents would be away on a trip. This was not the opportunity to seek the company of a girl; it was not worth risking the wrath of both our parents let alone the village priest! It was time to seek the boys out. It was a 6 km round trip and I didn’t want to run into the boys from the other village alone, they would take the opportunity to settle scores. Being from a different village was good enough reason. We had to be appropriately armed with whips and our pockets stuffed with rocks. Dressing was not a matter of choice; to keep out the bitter cold and rain, or the rotten eggs thrown by the local psycho living out his hobby, and to hide from the self appointed village moralist who will spend the night on the prowl, and next day visiting homesteads and letting the parents in on their son’s night time activities, we had to be fully covered. A tiny slit at the eye level was all you exposed.

In the midst of shoving and pushing, I could hardly make out most of the images on the screen, it was skewed, the canvas flapped and swayed wildly at times due to strong winds, the projector kept jerking, and in turn, the action momentarily lay on on a kei apple hedge behind the goalpost. The reel was well worn and kept snapping. Whoever patched it up must have been pocketing sizeable rolls from it judging from the huge gaps in the story. The actor’s voices were inaudible and I was grappling with the language then, you can only imagine my trying to make out accents, Stallone’s and Schwarzenegger’s to begin with! Oh California! The crew had anticipated this and had introduced a running commentary in Swahili although it was always a couple of frames off.

Doggy Dog World!

Once, I had a dog. Itsy B, a Basenji type I named after that song... itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini…? Yeah. It was brown with white patches all over, or the other way round. I shortened the name for one reason only. Oh! you’ve guessed it already... didn’t want my parents to find out I’d ever heard of that last word. I’d bought him for around 2 dollars at a local market, and that was after some hard bargaining. Dogs can be expensive! Either way, I prided in having Itsy B on a day out hunting rabbit’s or hanging out at the local. Sometimes however, he was a dead giveaway at night in a rural Kenyan village full of “stone” snipers. Somewhere along, three years or so, I moved to the city and he got involved in a brawl with some neighbourhood terriers, and died later.

I was watching some news clip on dogs and that brought Itsy B back to mind. The best place for a dog to live is in Europe! That’s according to some pollster. Statistics, they are but I don’t know how they qualify what makes a dog happy! Room in the house? some cuddly kids? dog food from the supermarket? a nice walk in the evening? a car ride to a local dog show and a monthly visit to the vet to cup it all up? Well, surely, they do.

In all fairness, by any standards, my dog was happy. The nicest of places to stay was in the wild and free rural Kenya. There were no worries for food, lots of wild animals to take care of that. The thrill of chasing rabbits, squirrels, the occasional antelope and the pride of tearing into the well earned meal were simply unmatched. Well, there is the left over food business but look at it as sharing… alright? Sometimes, I’d snatch the rabbits from him too. Hygiene? Well, he had the world to drop anything and the river is 50 metres from the house, he could take a dip anytime he felt like. He could hang out with the local dogs at night for company and keep the neighbourhood safe at the same time. Sometimes he’d be gone for a whole day on some dog day out errands with no questions asked. Visit to the Vet? are you serious!, our local veterinary doctor was strictly a cows and sheep man.

Maybe if he’d watched TV and seen all those niceties in dog Europe, he’d have a change of heart, only for a while, and then, just like a day out, he’d come running back home to those bones in the trash bin.