Other than this, talent, and speaking Igbo, we’re really not that different
Aug 6, 2007 Amobi Okoye is 20, Athletes who don't stab people, Boobies, Fluff, Self-Referential Stuff
There are plenty of reasons to like Amobi Okoye. For instance, he’s smart. He’s incredibly athletic. He’s not Travis Johnson.
Perhaps the best thing about him, though, is that by all accounts he’s one of the most humble, down-to-earth people you’d ever meet. Apparently, fearing for your life throughout much of your childhood will do that to a guy.
As recently as eight years ago, Okoye worried almost daily that his father Augustine — or someone else he loved — might be killed by simply opening his mouth. In 1993, when the military overthrew the government in Nigeria, turmoil erupted in Okoye’s native country.
‘When the military took over, they were very hostile,’ said Augustine, who owned his own business and was a major contractor for the government before the coup. ‘They went from being hostile to a dictatorship. No freedom of speech. If you said something, you were either killed or something. It got real bad.’
That has got to suck. I mean, when I was 12, I wondered about a lot of things–how to find the last Rated Rookies to complete the set of Donruss baseball cards, whether anyone would be playing football behind the high school in the afternoon, where to maximize my chances to see boobies–but I never had to stress over whether my dad would be alive in the morning. Yikes.
