Union midfielder Lahoud has seen fear of Ebola up close

You think sports crowds in this city are rough on visitors? Michael Lahoud, a midfielder for the Union, described how he played in an African Nations Cup qualifier earlier this month in the Congo to the accompaniment of a crowd chanting, "Ebola! Ebola!"

"For 90 minutes," Lahoud said, "playing away in Africa is the toughest thing to do in the world."

Lahoud was representing his native country, Sierra Leone, which Monday ended a three-day lockdown after government officials had ordered everyone in the country into their homes to try to stem the spread of the Ebola virus. More than 560 of the 2,630 deaths caused by Ebola in West Africa have occurred in Sierra Leone.

Lahoud witnessed the fear of Ebola up close. Making a connection at the airport in Nairobi, Kenya, with six others from the national team after their last game, Lahoud and the rest were not allowed out of the airport during an eight-hour layover simply because they were from Sierra Leone. Immigration officials at one point ordered them not to return to the terminal. In limbo, they had to argue their case just to get on their connecting flights.

"We're looked at as lepers," Lahoud said, although he doesn't know anyone personally who has the virus. In other countries for qualifiers, players would get checked twice a day for any flu-like symptoms.

Joining his national team has been a blessing for a player who has been in the United States for more than two decades. Lahoud, 28, first began playing his sport at age 5 in the streets of his native Freetown with a typical beat-up leather ball, he said, with young children and adults together, a "free-for-all" of soccer till sundown. With civil war raging, his family moved to Northern Virginia when Michael was 6. There, Lahoud came up the youth soccer ranks and played college soccer at Wake Forest.

Just back from a run, Lahoud was on the phone with a reporter Monday morning when he received a text from a teammate on Sierra Leone's national team living in England, telling Lahoud that there was dancing in some streets of their home country, that people were proclaiming the Ebola was over in Sierra Leone.

"This is pretty disturbing," Lahoud said as he checked a BBC News site for context. The lockdown would not be extended, he said, causing the celebration. But he knew it was far from over.

"The biggest thing with Ebola, and just experiencing with our national team, and being in touch with people back home, is the misinformation about it - a lot of people still don't grasp the severity of it," Lahoud said. "I don't know if it is a means of coping with it, seeing something positive, holding on to that."

Within Sierra Leone, he said, a lot of the fear stems from distrust of the government after the civil war "which destroyed our country completely. . . . There's a mixture of disbelief, distrust, and fear."

Because of an edict against public gatherings, Sierra Leone is playing its home African Nations Cup qualifiers on the road, including next month in Cameroon. It makes the team the greatest of underdogs.

When Lahoud returned to the United States last month, he began a discussion with Temple School of Tourism and Hospitality Management professor Thilo Kunkel, a German native whose research focuses on sports and "consumer attitudes and behavior." They had met at a Union event earlier this year.

Insipred by the success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, they came up with the idea for what they call the #KickEbolaInTheButt Challenge, which is about what you'd expect if you imagine a soccer ball as part of it.

"If you hit me, I donate X amount," Lahoud said. "If you miss, then you donate."

On Sunday at 2 p.m., Lahoud and several Union teammates will be at Temple's Geasey Field to lead the Challenge in person. His efforts, he said, stem from a speech that Sierra Leone's coach gave just before the game against Ivory Coast.

"He could have said anything about the game and tactics," Lahoud said. "The only thing he reminded us is that we are playing for 6 million people back at home who have nothing, who are losing hope and once again struggling, and in the world spotlight for something not good."

Lahoud knew he couldn't leave those words behind just by getting on a plane. And that chant in the stadium, intended as a taunt, serves more as a spur.

@jensenoffcampus