Here are the passionate verses of today's Kenya Song, Tuesday, December 8th:
"As long as I am alive, this theatre will not be sold for a supermarket or something else that has nothing to do with art, culture or entertainment".
This was the answer given a few years ago by Mrs. Amina Karith, who together with her husband in 1973 decided to build a cinema-theatre in Malindi, at a time when it was difficult to find one of its kind in Mombasa and Nairobi: the Cleopatra Theatre, named after the epic film by John Huston.
The building is still visible, a few metres from the "roundabout", the entrance to the town centre.
In the eighties it became the meeting place of those who loved the genre that would later be called Bollywood. Those fantastic Indian meatloafs able to go from tragedy to musical, comic and action in two hours. With twenty shillings you could enter, smoke, sweat and breathe international moods. The matinees were dedicated to school groups, with cultural settings to complement the school programmes, just as we do in Italy.
The first blow was in 1998, a devastation by vandals that had never been identified. Then the ban on smoking, which changed many of the habits of indoor meeting places. It went on alternating movies and football matches, but the advent of satellites, streaming and pirate sites on the internet dealt another blow. When the owners were thinking of relaunching it at least as a conference hall, to perhaps resurrect the theatrical activity, this was the Covid-19's coup de grace.
"But I still believe in relaunching culture, performances, at the limit of meetings - says Amina - I hope to find sponsors who believe in it like I do. Cleopatra can become a resource for the whole town. With 100,000 euros it could be transformed into a concert hall, theatre and other facilities. Those who believe in it, come forward!". 
What could be better than a theatre, for a choral revival chant?