My name is Ibrahim Khaleel Kante.

Sometimes when I think about where I am, I still can't believe it. Living in North Carolina, playing big-time football. I never really expected to be here.

Life here at NC State is so different from what my life was like growing up. It’s even more different from what my parents’ lives were like when they were growing up.

But what I'm doing now is the reason my parents made an important decision many years ago.

------------------------

My family is African. My mother, Wodia Kande, was born in Guinea and my father, Sekou Kante, was both born in the Ivory Coast. My mother later moved to the Ivory Coast and met my father.

The Ivory Coast wasn’t a bad place. It was pretty safe for the most part, except when they had elections. (EDITOR'S NOTE: There have been two Civil Wars in the Ivory Coast since 2002 - both starting over elections. Over 5,000 people have been killed in those conflicts.)

My dad’s village is called Divo and my mom’s is Segula. We are from the Mandika tribe. In Mandika culture, family is very important. Families live in compounds – in separate homes that are connected. The head of the family would stay in the biggest house and then his children would build their homes around the house.

So my grandfather stayed in the biggest house, and then that part passed down to his oldest son.

Some of my family had moved to the United States and my parents decided to move as well. They came a couple of years before I was born because they knew that one day their kids would have a chance in the U.S. to have a better education. They wanted more opportunities for themselves and the kids they would one day have.

------------------------

I was born in Harlem, New York. I lived in the same apartment on 141st Street until I left home after high school.

There were six of us: my mother, my brother Omar and my sister Khadija and I, and my aunt and cousin. Another aunt and cousins live downstairs and there are several other African families in our building. We brought the culture of families living together to the U.S.

I was always around family.

When I was growing up, we didn’t speak English at home. We still don’t. We all speak Mandinka.

If I’m at home, I think in my language. If I’m outside, I think in English. When I was younger and I would reply to people, I would catch myself about to reply in my language instead of English. Sometimes I would mix it up when I was speaking.

When I was growing up, we listened to African music. I didn’t listen to any popular music until I was older.

We mostly eat African food at home. We never ate pizza and French fries when I was growing up, just a lot of rice, beef and chicken. My favorite food to this day is lamb chops with acheke. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Acheke is a dish unique to the Ivory Coast. Similar in texture to couscous, it is made from cassava pulp.)

------------------------

I grew up deep in Harlem. I know everybody always hears bad things about Harlem and there were bad things going on. But my mom was always on top of me. I couldn’t go outside whenever I wanted. If I didn’t come home by 6, my mom would come looking for me. I wasn’t a loud kid growing up. Even though I had a lot of friends, I wasn’t loud outside my school. People never approached me in a negative way. I went to school and came home and got left alone.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t see the violence.

I did. All the time. I just wasn’t involved in it. I saw people fighting on the train and saw it escalate to more violence. I saw people jumping people for no reason. When I saw stuff like that, I always walked away from it right away. I never tried to stay in a crowd back home because that’s how you get caught up in violence. If somebody starts shooting, you can get hit. That’s just how it is.

There were a lot of Africans in my neighborhood, but I had all types of friends from every culture growing up. When somebody is African, there is an instant connection when you see another African. You feel a bond. Even if someone from the Ivory Coast runs into somebody from Kenya – which is more than 4000 miles away – you still feel it.

My family is Muslim and that is a really important part of our culture as well. When I was a kid, we could be outside doing anything, but when the call to prayer came, we went to the Mosque to pray. We pray five times a day.

My mother was always making sure that I had the best opportunity to get an education. I started off in regular public school, but the environment was not good, so she enrolled me in charter school.

------------------------

Harlem is known for basketball. Everybody has heard of Rucker Park and all the future NBA players who played there.

I don’t think anybody can name an NFL player who came from Harlem.

I played Pop Warner football for the Abyssinian Crusaders when I was nine or 10. We played on a baseball field. I don’t think I ever saw a football field in Harlem. There were a lot of basketball courts, some baseball and soccer fields, but no football fields.

But my family thought football was too brutal and they wanted me to focus on school, so I only played for a year and a half.

I have to admit. I didn’t love it. I was a gamer. I played video games a lot. Some days, I would go home and skip practice because I wanted to play the game so bad. I was one of those kids.

When I got to middle school, we would throw a football around at recess sometimes. I wasn’t tall, so I didn’t have an upper hand in basketball. But I could throw and catch a football and I liked it.

But any football that we played, we played on a basketball court, on concrete inside a fence. It wasn’t really football, although we would get kinda serious about it. We would tackle each other.

------------------------

My best friend growing up was Aboubacar. Since we were kids, we hung out all the time. He lived in the building right behind my building and every weekend he was at my house. When we were 13, he went to Africa for the summer and got sick and died.

I couldn't believe it. I didn't understand how that could have happened. That's when I became a quieter guy. I really didn't speak that much for a while after that.

------------------------

When I was in ninth grade we went back to visit Africa for a few months (I had been once before when I was younger). We spent part of our time with family in the city of Abidjan and then in the village where my family is from. My mother wanted us to experience both parts so we could see what life was like.

It’s so different there. If we wanted fruit, we had to go pick it from a tree. I remember one time going with my uncle to get food for dinner. He handed me two live chickens with their feet wrapped up and told me to keep them calm in the car. They were flapping around and I was scared. There was a guy who had a hyena living in his house.

Another cousin had a pet hamster. To get the food for the hamster to eat, we had to walk through muddy areas with snakes in it, cut down leaves with a machete and then bring back the heavy bag. There is electricity, but you never know when it will cut off. Same with the internet.

But it was so fun!

In Africa, you’re always outside and you’re always with your family. Only when you go to sleep are you not with your family.

------------------------

When I was going into high school, I took an exam and was accepted to Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx.

When I got to Cardinal Hayes, I was on the football team. But football wasn’t my thing. I was still a gamer. I would go home every day and play Call of Duty.

I didn’t really like football and I didn’t take it very seriously. I would say that I was going to play college football one day, but I didn’t really believe it. I was on the team my freshmen, sophomore and junior years, but I didn’t play.

When I was 16, about to be 17, I was still pretty short. I knew there was a possibility that I would be tall because some of my family members back in Africa were tall. And I was wearing a size 14 shoe.

Then out of nowhere, I started growing taller and taller. I grew 3-4 inches in about three months.

My knees would hurt so bad from growing so fast. My mom bought me a pair of jeans that fit perfectly and a week later they didn’t fit. She stopped buying me jeans and from then on she would only buy sweatpants so I keep wearing them if I grew.

One day my coach was standing next to me and I was shorter than him. A couple of months later, I was taller than him. That’s when they moved me to defensive end.

------------------------

When I was 17, my teammate Delano died. That really was hard for me to accept too. That was when I really started to focus on football and making the most of the opportunities in front of me.

My coaches started telling me to take football more seriously and give myself a chance. Once I heard people telling me that I had the potential, that’s when I started working hard. But I was a senior in high school before I really took it seriously. I ended up starting as a senior. My coaches told me that if I could play one more year, I could get some offers.

So I decided to go to prep school for a year after I graduated from high school. The school – Trinity Pawling – was in upstate New York. You had to take a two-hour train ride, then go up a hill to this big campus.

It was a bit of a culture shock. When I hugged my mom and she left me there, I was like "Yo! I'm all by myself!"

There was no family (I only knew one person there). No African food. No African music. As a Muslim, I don’t eat pork, but sometimes that was the only meat they served, so I would only eat rice.

I remember calling my mom with nothing to say just so I could hear her voice.

But after a while I got used to it. I was shy at first. I had friends, but I didn’t talk to other people. I just played football.

------------------------

I started to get interest from schools. One day I was on another visit at another school and Coach McDonald texted me. I was like, "What?!?!" After that we kept talking. I wanted to go to a school where they would develop me. When NC State got interested in me, I looked up their strength program and when I saw what Coach Thunder was doing and I realized this might be a school that I might like.

My family and I came on an official visit to NC State and we met my uncles who live in Knightdale. I knew right away this was the place for me.

So I came to NC State.

------------------------

When I came here to school, it was the first time I ever had a room to myself. I have to admit, I didn't mind it.

Now I’m eight hours from home. My little brother Esa was born last year, so my mom hasn’t been able to come down much and I’ve only been home twice in the 2-1/2 years since I’ve been here. It’s hard for me, but I think it’s harder for my mom - because I have football.

My first year, I played on the d-line with all of those older guys: Chubb, B.J., Kentavius, Justin. I looked up to them and learned from them. They tried to get me to come out of my shell so they would joke around. That’s how I started opening up.