Emeka Okafor? At AISL?

On Friday, we got a surprise visit from Emeka Okafor, NBA's Rookie of the Year in 2004 and the second overall pick in the 2004 draft by the Charlotte Bobcats. His family is from Nigeria and he was visiting while spreading the word on his One Million African Lives Initiative - basically a clean-blood awareness campaign that he is the spokesperson for. His full name happens to be the same name the Igbo people gave me over here, Chukwuemeka - meaning "God did well." When I told him that, I think he thought I was messing around until I showed him I knew what it meant. Then he asked how in the world I got that name and I had to tell him the Igbo folks named me that. I think he was pretty surprised that a white guy could have an Igbo name, let alone, the same as his. I think I have more Nigerian adaptations of my name than he; my Nigerian friends call me Chooks, A-Mex, and Emeka (pronounced Eh-Meh-kuh).

He spent about 30 minutes at AISL's lunchtime playing hoops with the students and of course signing autographs for the students. I would venture to say 95% of the kids didn't know who he was but figured that a 6'10" man walking around AISL had to be famous for one reason or another.

On a separate note, Mr. Shearer was given a jersey by Mr. Okafor, and he gave it to me for helping him with being able to listen to his son Matt's football games online. It turned out that they had technical difficulties this Saturday with the radio feed, so it didn't work out. Needless to say, I couldn't do anything about it, but still feel pretty bad that he didn't get to hear Matt's 9 tackles broadcast over the air. Hopefully this next week it works out better, or I'll be needing to give that jersey back!

Anyway, Emeka Okafor was so humble and gracious with the students. Very nice, down to earth guy. He finished school at UCONN in 3 years and graduated with a 3.76 (he was a lot more specific than newspapers get listing him at a 3.8) after majoring in Finance. Anyway, thought I would add him to the list of famous people we've met while traveling the world!

That's what 1 foot taller than me looks like.