LOGAN — Nnamdi Gwacham spent many nights in a Nigerian Christian boarding school wondering why his parents, Edwin and Caroline, sent him to a facility with poor conditions and where most students were twice his age.
He was miles from home in a place with no electricity and a poor sewer system. The school, he said, was under construction while they were living and studying there.
He studied at nights by kerosine lamp.
Visits were allowed on the first Saturday of every month, but he wasn't always visited.
He was just 9.
"It took me three months for find out, 'OK, I'm here for a reason and I need to make the best of it.' At first, I was, 'What am I doing here? Why did my parents send me here? Do they know what it's like over here?"' he said.
And since that realization, he has never looked back.
"It was (Edwin's) way of showing me what life could be like after you get out of school, and I really do believe that," he said.
Plus, it was a way for his father, an entrepreneur who lived through the Biafran War (Nigerian Civil War), and his mother, who still owns a bridal shop in Nigeria, to shelter him from the political unrest and other challenges many Nigerians faced in the mid-1990s.
"I didn't know a lot about what was going on outside of school unless I went home," he said. "For the short amount of time I was home, I would hear one or two things."
In 1999, when Gwacham was 11-years old, his parents won a lottery sponsored by the U.S. government to receive permanent citizenship to the United States.
Gwacham and his family — his mother, father, two sisters and brother — joined his mother's sister in Chino Hills, Calif.
"I will always take advantage of the opportunities I have been given," he said. "This (coming to the U.S.) is probably the biggest (opportunity) that I have ever been given in my life."
In Nigeria, he was in the ninth grade at 9, but when he came to the United States, he was enrolled in the sixth grade — with students his own age.
He spoke English, but with a very thick accent. Kids at school had a hard time understanding him, and when they did, they had a hard time saying his name, Nnamdi (pronounced Nawm-dee).
Blessed with an outgoing personality, Gwacham quickly adapted. After all, he had been through worse in his native Nigeria.
At first he didn't like pizza, spaghetti or hamburgers. Shortly, the accent began to fade, and he acquired the taste for America's favorite foods.
From there, he looked for, and took advantage of, the opportunities he heard the United States had to offer — namely school.
While growing up, he saw his cousin earn a football scholarship as a defensive back to the University of Nevada-Reno, and Gwacham wanted the same.
"That was his ticket for a free college education and I started looking at football as my ticket to a free education," he said. "I looked at sports, in general, as a way to go to college."
The first football game he ever saw was Green Bay vs. Minnesota, and he saw Packers wide receiver Antonio Freeman make a spectacular catch. From then on, Gwacham wanted to play the same position.
"That's where I got my receiver mentality," he said. "I wanted to be a receiver from what I saw on television."
He picked up football during his junior year in high school. He spent a lot of extra time with coaches learning the sport.
"It came naturally to me," he said.
As a senior, he led the team with 22 catches for 374 yards and three touchdowns, while posting 39 tackles at safety.
He was a second-team all-league player, an academic all-CF Southern Section selection and named the school's male scholar-athlete of the year.
While many of his friends in Nigeria who have graduated from high school were, and are still on, waiting lists to get into college there, Gwacham fielded offers to go to school and play football at the U.S. Naval Academy and Utah State. After weighing his options, he chose to go to Logan.
Academically, he's a sophomore and carries a 3.7 GPA while studying for a degree in exercise science. He eventually wants to be a chiropractor.
Athletically, he is a redshirt freshman. In six games, he has three catches for 41 yards.
Despite the success he's had on the field and in the classroom, Gwacham hasn't forgotten his roots. At times, he thinks of what his life would be like now if he was still in his hometown of Onitsha, Nigeria, but he is grateful for the sacrifice his parents made to get him a quality education and get him to the United States, regardless of how tough it was being away from home while young.
"It wasn't that they didn't love me," he said. "It was because they loved me enough to send me away to boarding school."
Now, he feels the obligation to give back.
"A lot of people that come from Nigeria to the United States, or especially their kids, have aspirations to go back and help out," he said. "Personally, I think Nigeria could be one of the top countries in the world. We're at the bottom right now. If the country is in the hands of the right people, we could flourish. If we took care of our own people, we would flourish. I definitely look forward to going back whenever I can."
Nnamdi Gwacham bio
Name: Nnamdi Gwacham
Birthdate: Nov. 20, 1987 (Onitsha, Nigeria)
Year: Fr.
Pos: WR
Major: Exercise Science
Personal: Parents, Edwin and Caroline; sisters, Adaobi, Chiko; brother, Obum ... Adaobi plays basketball at Cal Baptist ... Moved to the United States in 1999 ... Went to Christian boarding school starting at age 9 ... Has three catches for 41 yards this season.
E-mail: jhinton@desnews.com