One thing we didn’t expect, when we booked this trip, was that it would coincide with the opening of Captain Marvel in Cameroon. Someone in the community organized tickets, so we went along for the experience. I thought it interesting that the theater parking lot (on a major university campus) bordered on a crazy stand of banana trees:

The bananas went most of the way around the parking lot:

But it was also on a bit of a hill, so on the other side the trees slope down, making buildings visible across the valley:

Then, of course, there is the theater building itself:

Here is a 180º panoramic showing this all together:

Here are the kids, standing in line 🙂

Inside, there were big comfy chairs:

And we each got to sit with someone we liked:

Out of respect for the establishment’s very clear and repeated instructions, I had my phone off during the movie, but there were a couple other points to note. First, though the pictures above don’t show it, the theater completely filled up. And this was the original (English) version of the film, not a dubbed (French) version, so it was interesting to see so many Cameroonians there.

Second, it was interesting to see how much more communal the experience was. Throughout the movie there were audible reactions to what was going on. Not people being obnoxious, just reacting, and lots of people reacting together. Like once, a character said something like “he lied to me!” As this was a conclusion most of the audience had reached earlier, someone responded “Really?!?” in French, and the whole room laughed.

Anyway, it was good to get out on the town (even if we had to sit in traffic to get there), and enjoy a community experience, while also hanging out with a number of other missionaries (and their kids!). We never really had this kind of experience in Kenya, Uganda, or DRCongo, so it is nice to know that this will be possible to do on occasion.