Like this:

I get DVDs every now and then from a shop in town called “Image Movies”. Not the greatest start to a blog post about Africa eh? Well this shop happens to be the best DVD shop I’ve ever been in. You walk in and grab a DVD “Menu” from the shelf. All the menus are divided up into genres – Horror, Comedy, Romance, Action, TV Series etc etc. They also give you an envelope. So you flick through the menus and write down whatever movies you want onto the envelope. Once you’ve written down whatever you want, you hand the envelope to the person at the counter, and they burn the list of movies “while U wait”. I usually go for a pint (@ only 1.20e I might add) in the “Jazz Bar” right across the road while I wait for the movies. After about 20 minutes I collect all the movies which are now inside the envelope I had originally written on, and pay them 50shillings per disc, which is about 43 euro cent per disc.

Most people in Ireland would probably download whatever they want and not bother paying 50cent per disc, but internet access in Kenyan homes is still a bit of a luxury, so these shops do great business, and they are all over the city. Movie piracy is a big business here and it is out in the open, these aren’t dodgy alley-way shops. The police walk past these places every day. You can even get great quality movies (not camera copy) before they come out in the cinema here, which probably explains why every time I go the cinema here there are usually only about 5 people in the whole screen.

Even if I did have super high speed internet access, I would still use these shops as you can get whole seasons for 43 cent. So for example, you can buy “24” season 1-5 for about 2euro in 20 minutes, instead of downloading the whole lot over a few days and having your housemates complaining that you’re taking over the whole feckin WiFi. I’d love to open a business like this back home but unfortunately I’d be arrested by the time I burn the first disc.