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Ghanaian soccer star Michael Essien is 32 today. He spoke to The Guardian on his life at 32, and the Ebola rumour. Excerpts:
Happy birthday, Michael, you are 32 on Wednesday. What’s been the most memorable thing of the past year?
Well, my most memorable thing wasn’t the most pleasant. The whole Ebola hoax …
Yes, two months ago you were a victim of a Twitter hoax which said that you had Ebola. Tell me your version of events
It was a Sunday. I trained as usual that morning and went home in the afternoon to relax and chill out. Then I got a call from our club doctor who told me there was news out that I had Ebola. I said: ‘how can I have Ebola? You saw me this morning at training so what do you mean I have Ebola?’
Within minutes, my media team had sent me Twitter messages of the hoax and websites on which it was trending. We joked about it and put it to bed. But within 45 to 60 minutes, it was all over the news and I was getting messages from friends, family and ordinary people asking how I was.
I was even getting get well soon messages and that’s when it dawned on me that I had to do something to stop it getting out of hand. So, together with Milan and our media team we released a statement clearly stating it was a hoax and there was no truth in the rumour that I had Ebola. And that’s when the whole thing started to die down. Still, it took about two days or so for people to actually stop talking about it.
Did you at any stage in those two days panic about the whole thing?
No. I won’t say I panicked or stressed but it was not an enjoyable experience. My family was worried about me in London and Ghana to the extent that my mum rang me to double check that I was fine the next day. I don’t enjoy my mum being stressed so that part was not a good experience and it wasn’t fair on the true sufferers of Ebola and their families. It’s not a joke and people need to understand that.
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