The road trip began in Abidjan. On an early-2000s morning, in the Ivory Coast’s bustling coastal capital, a young boy and his mother stepped up into a transport bus. And for hours, they rumbled northwest, along highways and dirt roads, away from home. They rumbled through rural West Africa, past greenery and barrenness, toward Guinea. To visit an uncle, the boy assumed.

It wasn’t until later that the boy, Azur Kamara, realized his assumption was only partially correct.

It’s the type of snapshot that will flicker into Kamara’s head every so often, even as he chases a professional football career two decades and thousands of miles away. Snapshots of childhood; of the upheaval that filled it; of the challenges encountered.

But the snapshots don’t, he clarifies, haunt him. They aren’t scars. They’re reminders to be grateful. And reminders of what he can overcome. They’re reasons he’s built himself into a 6-foot-4, 248-pound edge-rushing menace. And reasons NFL teams see late-round potential for much more.

They are, Kamara says, the reasons “[I’m] the man I am today.”

But those hours on the road aren’t the reason he’s telling this particular story. The bus arrived safely at his uncle’s house in Guinea. When it did, young Azur bounded off with his cousins to play.

He’s telling this story because when he came back to the house, Mom was gone. And although he didn’t know it at the time, he’d never see her in Africa again.

View photos Oklahoma State quarterback Spencer Sanders rolls out to avoid Kansas' Azur Kamara. (Brian Bahr/Getty Images) More

Guinean life

Azur Kamara’s mother, Djaka, is his role model. Back in the early 2000s, he couldn’t explain why. He wasn’t fully aware that she “was going through a lot, some really tough times.” But he saw her toil. Day after day. Whatever it took to put food in her three children’s stomachs; clothes on their frail bodies; a roof over their heads. Azur remembers peddling her homemade sweets to neighbors. He also knows there was so much he didn’t see, or doesn’t remember; some ”family stuff going on,” stuff he won’t delve into.

At the time, though, he was young. And after Mom dropped him off at his uncle’s house, then continued on her way, life continued on too. Azur settled into a routine he recalls fondly. The prayers at the mosque next door. The watery-rice breakfasts his auntie would make. The 20-minute walk to Arabic school. The 5-on-5 soccer games afterward, the ball skidding on dirt, his friends chirping away, their smiles worry-free. It didn’t matter that some days there was no breakfast at all. Didn’t matter that four grades were packed into the same classroom. Didn’t matter that the field had no grass.

Then there was life in the Guinean village where extended family would convene once a year. Azur and his cousins, all of 7 or 8 years old, trekked miles to fetch water every two or three days. They’d fill buckets or containers at a well. They’d lift them onto their heads and march back, under a beating summer sun, every spilled drop representing effort wasted. Everybody back at their mudhouses – 15 people per three bedrooms, Azur estimates – was counting on them.

In the village, Azur would reunite with his sisters, Amie and Fatu, who’d been staying with other relatives. They, too, were parentless, with Dad out of the picture and Mom’s whereabouts unknown. They, too, had not heard from her since she dropped them off in Guinea.

Until, a couple of years later, an uncle got a phone call. He relayed the message to the kids.

Mom was in the United States.

The American journey

Amie cried. Azur didn’t know how, or why, Mom had fled. The siblings were vaguely aware that a civil war raged in the Ivory Coast while they were gone. But Mom had never talked about her plans. Never said grand goodbyes. And the United States? The kids could barely even conceptualize what the United States were.

Story continues