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That poignant narrative called the American Dream often includes a conflicted and emotional journey.
Ema Twumasi left his home in Ghana when he was 11-years-old to enter the Right to Dream Academy on the banks of the River Volta. Same country, but it may as well have been Mars.
Twumasi was an only child and a fatherless son who grew up poor in a region where families make less than $2 a day. His mother Christiana Abrefa ran a clothes stall in the town of Sunyani, in western Ghana.
The residential soccer academy offered him a way out. It identifies talent across Ghana, offering academic classes for more than five hours daily. Graduates receive the equivalent of Ghana’s high-school diploma.
It broke her heart so see him go, but he was a Chosen One.
“It was very hard for her to let me go and for me to leave her,” Twumasi said. “But she knew it was more than just me and her. She knew I was trying to achieve my goal. So she let go of me. She talked to me and supported me every day.”
The journey eventually took Twumasi to a boarding school in Connecticut, and then to college at Wake Forest. Now, he preps for the next step as a Generation adidas athlete and one of the more intriguing prospects in the MLS SuperDraft pool.
Twumasi, a few months short of 21, played two seasons at Wake Forest, scoring 16 goals in 47 games. That was enough of a resume to make him an elite prospect, targeted as a potential Top 5 pick who joined a number of other top players at the MLS Combine in Orlando this week.
It’s been a challenging road, understandably, from picking up a new language (English) to the nuances of a different culture as he lived with a host family in the U.S. for four years.
All the while, there was limited contact with his mother. He has been back to Ghana twice in the in last six years —the first time after he graduated from the Kent School in Connecticut, and then after his freshman year of college.
The game he loved so much has always been his security blanket.
“Soccer came easy for me because I picked it up at an early age on the streets,” he said.
The rest was all about adapting and adjusting.
“I managed to adjust well because everyone was my age,” he said, reflecting on his days at the academy. “And when you are around friends you kind of forget everything that is going on. My friends let me settle in and everyone at the academy accepted me and made me feel that I was something bigger than the academy itself.”
Perhaps. Back then he was just a boy with a dream. Now he is a young man with higher expectations.