I mentioned I had never seen a movie in my life until I reported to High School. That was not the case with my brothers. There was a company called Factual Films (1974) that traveled around the country showing films in rural towns. They rolled into OlKalou town every three months or so.
It was a van pulling a covered trailer. The trailer carried the equipment for beaming the movie onto a canvas screen. The moment they were spotted in town, word quickly traveled across the Settlement Scheme. The movie was usually shown on a Friday evening starting at 7pm.
The team looked for an open field that could sit a lot of people. No chairs necessary. They hoisted the huge canvas screen against the side of a building or secured it on poles, holding it down with ropes staked into the ground.
The van was strategically parked at a good distance from where they beamed the movie. The kids and some adults sat in the middle, between the van and the screen. Everybody had to stay seated so that the beam could be projected high above their heads. Sometimes a kid would forget and stand up, getting in the way of the beam, blocking the picture, his giant head projecting on the screen instead. That was when the narrator yelled “WATOTO KAENI CHINI” (Sit down children). That became a code term for the movies. My brothers and majority of the boys in our Settlement Scheme used that code “watoto kaeni chini” to throw parents and teachers off whenever they were discussing movies. They thought it was like a CID code that could not be cracked.
