Thursday, January 15, 2009

Welcome to Africa column: (Forgotten) Part Deux: Going to the movies

To add to my last entry about going to the movies and having to choose our seats, which we view as a bizarre practice:

Perhaps even more bizarre, the most unusual part of going to the movies here, is this (and I can’t believe I forgot this and left this out of the last entry):

After all the usual movie previews, on the screen came a picture of the Kenyan flag, and an announcer said, "Let us stand for the national anthem [Kenya's, of course]." It was quite awkward. There were just a few couples in the movie theater, and most of us clearly weren't Kenyans. But out of respect, we all stood for a minute or so while the music played, and then we all sat down, and the movie proceeded. It wasn't our national anthem, but we didn't want to be disrespectful. It was just kind of strange hearing and having to stand for the national anthem in a movie theater, with so few people present, and in the near dark.

1 comment:

Paula said...

I seem to remembe when i was a girl that they would play the US anthem and have a picture of the flag waving on the screen. I do not remember standing, but since people were so repectful then I suspect they did. We also watched news reels ahead of the feature film. Gave us a small picture before the advent of TV.