The Universal Language of Football

As the World Cup will soon dawn on the African horizon, there is a lot of football excitement here in Addis Ababa (even though Ethiopia’s team did not make the World Cup competition). Now, of course, when I talk about football, I am talking about the sport that actually uses its feet, not as the American’s trying to confuse the rest of the world with their misnamed rendition. If American football has a legitimate claim to this title because the punter and place kicker occasionally kick the ball, then soccer can rightfully be called handball on the basis of the goalie’s job alone. Anyway, football fever is in the air over here.

In late March and most of April, we were meeting with a young Gmz man at the American run NGO – Cure Hospital. Cure specializes in surgeries for cleft palates and lips, which they perform without charge. So when some of our church planting friends came across little Andalo, a 4-5 year old Gmz boy with a large hole in his palate, they made arrangements for him to fly by helicopter into Addis for this surgery. Because of Andalo’s age, he had to have an “older brother” come along (the sibling relationship is not important, rather it needed to be someone who could speak both Gmz and Amharic and could act as his guardian during his time in Addis). So that is where Geshao came in. He is the bright teenager that we met with for about a month before he returned back to the Gmz area.

One particular day, Andrea and I made the trek (one hour by public transport) up to the hospital only to discover that Geshao was nowhere to be found. Knowing he was a growing follower of lslam, we should have known not to look for him on a Friday – which is a day with many, many prayers. Nevertheless, we spent our time at the hospital well – that is, speaking the international language of football. Andalo and I spent a good hour kicking a rubber ball back and forth. Although neither of us are ready to enter the World Cup competition, I can assure you that Andalo will be an excellent addition to any Kindergarten soccer team that I’ve ever seen. We have attached the video in case there are any soccer scouts following our blog.