Macarena Plague

I accidentally brought the Macarena to Fitche.

It all started out innocently enough.  Last year, whenever any of my students’ phones would go off during class, I would confiscate it and then return it only after the student had performed “the chicken dance.”  It worked pretty well.  There were very few students who were repeat offenders after I instituted this punishment, it was an entertaining bit of 2^nd goal, and most of the students seemed to get a kick out of it.  With this in mind, when we were discussing possible means of keeping students from being late to sessions during Camp GROW Fitche, I brought up the possibility of using another dance as a punishment, the “Macarena.”  Soon enough, the idea gained traction with the other PCVs involved in the camp, and the song was downloaded onto a few different devices.  Everyone involved agreed that I should be the one to enforce this rule, seeing as it was my idea.

When camp came about and some students (and a few of our Addis Ababa University girls) started showing up late to our meals, someone queued up the song and started blasting it out of the speakers.  I stood up, stopped all students who were coming in late, and started showing them the dance moves, which they had to copy until the other PCVs decided they had done it enough.  The ritual repeated during most of the meals during camp, and I thought that that was where it was going to end.  I was wrong.

The Macarena has now infected the collective playlist of Fitche.  I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I know that patient 0 was a sook on the main road of town.   Jamie Minchin, the director of our camp, was walking down the street on either the first or second day of camp, when she heard that song playing loudly over the shop’s speakers.  She called me, laughing, and explained what she’d just heard.  I laughed too, thinking it was just a one-off, the result of one of the kids texting a friend about this funny song they’d heard at camp, but it didn’t stop there.  Now, on something of a regular basis, I hear the shops and restaurants around town playing it.  It can’t be a coincidence.  No, I have brought a 90s pop song into vogue in Fitche, and it’s spreading.  Maybe someday soon it spread southward until it hits Addis.  All I’m saying is that, should you hear this song blasting out of a Bole club, it’s probably my fault.

Note: If anyone reading this is an HCN and is not familiar with “the Macarena,” please go ask an American about it.  The odds are very good that they know what it is and would show you the dance upon request, at least if they are 30 years of age or younger.

~Jessie