From The Orphanage To Punt, Pass & Kick Finals
7-Year-Old Hebron Boy's Soccer Skills Have Landed Him In The Finals Matiwos Rumley (Picasa, Hartford Courant ) January 2013 | Jeff Jacobs HEBRON — — A year ago, he was still sitting in an orphanage in Addis Ababa, one of five million Ethiopian orphans and vulnerable children. To be honest, sitting is probably the wrong word. For as the one-line description of Matiwos in his adoption portfolio read, "Lives to play, not to sit." Before Addis Ababa, Matiwos was in another orphanage, this one among his Sidama people in the Southern Nations section nearer to Kenya. The level of malnutrition, disease and lack of clean drinking water there is not some story for a television infomercial. It is a reality. And for the waiting children of Ethiopia, especially the older boys, another reality is they are rarely adopted. Yet here was Matiwos Rumley sitting the other day among his robust, loving family in a double-wing colonial in Hebron,