Capítulo 33: Vacation

When they told me to travel that clicked in my mind, and I remembered I had not taken a vacation, so it was time to do just that. I contacted Sandra and asked her whether she wanted to travel with me to Africa for a vacation to see where my family came from. She told me she has plans for the whole month and that we should do it another time.I was sad about this outcome, but I was not discouraged. I decided to take Opal, Rasta & Flo with me to Ghana, which was located in West Africa. Rasta had told me that there would be an African basketball tournament in Nigeria in two weeks.I was interested in that, and seeing that our great-great-grandfather was from Nigeria, we decided that we would take a trip there. We would spend two weeks in Ghana and then spend two weeks in Nigeria. We got ready to leave as I told Sandra about my plans, and she was sad that she wasn't able to join us.The day had arrived when we were boarding the airplane to Ghana; it was exciting for all of us because we hadn't been there in a while, and we still had family there, but we rarely talked to them. They all knew that my mother had passed away years ago, but they weren't able to come to the funeral, but they held their funeral back home in Ghana.The trip was long and tiring; we had to stop in Europe before boarding a different plane to reach Ghana. Finally, we reached Ghana, and the heat that assaulted us was unbearable. I wasn't used to this heat, so it took me some time to adjust to it. My uncle had come to pick us up from the airport, and since we were tired, we decided to check into a hotel.We didn't want to bother the family members by staying at their house, so we all decided that we would stay in the hotel. Flo was staying with Opal and Rasta was staying with me, after resting for the night the next day we went to grab some local food to eat.The food was natural, unlike the junk that we eat in the states that is full of artificial means; we enjoyed our meal and decided to tour around the city Accra. We visited monuments and other special places after we decided to visit our family members that were located in a region called Kumasi. We only stayed there for a few days and headed on to our family's home town Cape Coast.We enjoyed our stay there because it was nice and cool with the ocean breeze that came with the area. We had gotten a hotel that was right next to the ocean breeze and just relaxed there. We met a couple of my mother's friends during the weekend, I even spotted a basketball court and decided to go to school the local guys there on what real basketball was.They were amazed at my skills and asked me if I was in the NBA, but I told them, no, but I'm going to be there soon, they got excited to see a future NBA star and got my autograph. Some of the kids there were pretty good, and I wish that I could start a team over in this country shortly but I first had to get myself settled before I could do that.I had gained weight while I was there due to all the local foods that I was trying. I couldn't help myself. The food was so delicious when the two weeks came and I was sad to leave the country. Still, the tournament that was being held in Nigeria was going to be televised all over Nigeria, and they would announce their Olympic teams for basketball and soccer during that time.I knew they were going to use that tournament to look for better players for their Olympic basketball team, and maybe shortly, I'll probably be interested in playing for them. Still, if they could sneak me onto their roster for the Olympics that were coming up, I wouldn't mind that either, and i would not just represent Nigeria but the whole of Africa.We boarded the plane once again and made our way to Nigeria. We arrived at Lagos and met up with a guide that was supposed to show us around and get us settled within the country. His name was Awesome, which caused us to laugh. We asked him whether he was just saying that his name was awesome or whether his name was Awesome. He said:" in Nigeria, we use different names that Americans use as extraordinary words like blessings and happiness."I wasn't going to judge them because that was the way they lived, so we moved on, and he gave me the program for the upcoming tournament. He told me that all the big names in Nigeria will show up for this tournament and that the cash prizes were not exactly cash only. They were giving out cash prizes, brand new cars, and a custom-made house with a lot of land.I was surprised by this and got excited because I would have a vacation spot and even a house to come to stay at if I was ever to visit Nigeria. Awesome gave me more details on how these prizes would be split up between the team, each person would receive those prizes, and the MVP of the whole tournament would receive citizenship to Nigeria if they're from a different country.If they're from the country, they will just receive more money and a favor from the government. I told Brione, Sean, and John about the tournament before I left, so I was expecting them to be there before the tournament started. I had already given them instructions on where to meet us; they had to use the old money to get here since there was no excuse after winning the last tournament that we were in.I knew they had money to make that trip, so I just waited for them; we continue to tour around the cities until a week later when the tournament was starting. There were a lot of people there to show their support for the Nigerian teams. They were holding basketball and soccer in the same place. Hence, the place was chaotic and filled with fans from all over Africa, not just Nigeria but different countries because Nigeria was one of the only ones to qualify, so the neighboring countries could only come and show support for their fellow African.John, Sean, and Brione had finally made it, so we went to register our Team once again, calling us The Unstoppables. There were so many thick females there that were just dying to get with me because they knew that I was not from Nigeria due to the way I dressed and looked, but I knew Sandra would chew me out if I were to ever do anything with them, so I simply ignore them.This event was all week long, so we had a few games per day since there weren't many people signing up for basketball, but the soccer side was crazy. The basketball side started on Sunday and was going to end on Tuesday, but the soccer side had many more days due to a lot more people signing up for it. The day came when we played our first game the guys that were playing us looked like they didn't even belong over there.They were first of all short like '55 and 5'4, but they looked quick. Their forms when they were shooting were laughable; they didn't even get to score a single point against us the same with the second team that we played against. They were slightly better than the first team we played, but they also couldn't score against us.I don't know if it was because of the bonding that we have been bonding lately or because we've been playing together for so long we knew each other's moves and knew where we were going to be. The first day came to an end; I didn't even need to score a single point, John, Sean, Brione, and Rasta played most of the games together. Hence, there wasn't any need for me to make any moves because I was not scoring. They all thought that I was probably the worst one on the team, but they had no clue that I was the captain of the team.That night I was enjoying one of their local dishes when I had gotten the news that Sean had gotten sick from a dish that he was trying for the first time. I felt like this was done on purpose, and we rushed him to the hospital and got him medical attention. I made sure to keep Brione away from the local dishes. John was from Liberia, so I knew he would be okay.The next day we were a man short, but they allowed us to continue playing since they saw how good we were even with me, not shooting. Brione, John, and Rasta continued to win games for us, by the final day Sean was good enough to join the roster again and they had us playing against the team that was supposed to represent them for the Olympics next year.I was excited to be playing their elites, and they were also excited to be playing a match against Americans. The team had an extremely tall player when they did the jump ball. He didn't even have to jump and won the jump ball over to their side easily. Their point guard was like a cheetah extremely fast, even with my time freeze. I could see him still slowly moving, which made me think if this guy was a cheetah in disguise.As soon as their point guard had gotten the ball, he was already at the post making a layup before we could even set up our defense this distracted us because you couldn't move to his pace. He was going extremely fast and wanted to take the game into a faster pace Brione had to cover him once again because he was the fastest on our team, but even with Brione covering him every time he had taken that first step he had left Brione behind.We had to double-team him, but he wasn't the only one that was giving us problems. The center was so tall we could barely block him. He was just standing there, dunking it all over us. We had no chance against the guy, he was extremely tall, and the tallest person that was on our team was Rasta, but he couldn't hold a candle to this guy.I had to step it up during this game since the rest of my crew was not able to get any points over the center. Their power forward was also a monster; when he jumped, there was no way anybody could keep up with him at the height that he was going. He was able to touch the top of the backboard when he jumped easily. John was covering that guy, but he got dunked on a couple of times due to this guy's strength.Once everybody saw me playing, they were surprised at how good I was. I wasn't missing any shots, and I was taking deep shots. Those shots were the ones that were keeping us in the game; if it weren't for that, we would be losing by now. We were up by six points by the time half quarter had come. My team members were exhausted due to playing defense against these guys. It was quite a struggle, and the Nigerian team was frustrated with me. They started harboring thoughts of injuring me.They had their pride and thought that they were the best in the country at basketball, so when they were losing, they weren't too happy about it, and even their coach was pissed yelling at them. How could they be losing to a bunch of high schoolers while they were grown, men? Some were even in their thirties. After the break, the game started up again. Sean brought down the ball, and as soon as he was about to pass it to me, their point guard stole the ball and raced down the court to give them two points after the layup.At this point we kept going back and forth they started doing double teams and triple teams on me, and with that, I kept passing the ball to the open man, this opened up our offense, and the others started to get in points. The Nigerians didn't know what to do at this point, they tried everything to stop me, but nothing was working they even put the center on me to cover me but thanks to his speed not being as high as mine I was able to free myself from him most of the time.After not missing a single point during the game, they started to think that I was a God I ignored their critics. Everybody in my team was happy because they were getting their shots in. The game had finally come to an end with us winning by 15 points. The Nigerian team's morale was at an all-time low while we were celebrating. Their coach came to talk to us and wanted us all on his team. I told them that three of them are not from Nigeria or have any kind of Nigerian descendants in them, so they won't be able to play for them. Still, Rasta and I would gladly come off the bench only during the Olympics.They will probably have to make an ID for us. He quickly called the organizers to pass on the word that I'm recruitable for the upcoming Olympics and that we will be playing for them. After receiving our prizes, they showed us an empty plot of land that we will be able to build whatever we want at. It was a huge place with a lot of land and even had a jungle area. I already had planned on what I was going to do to this place.It was big enough to make a small city in, and I decided to do just that, first by clearing up the place and then by building a lot of businesses to attract people from all over the world. I had given them a drawing of how I wanted the city to look like; I would have them build a gym, a clinic, a school, a grocery store, and many other things. I will slowly expand it because there were more lands around and turn it into the main city sooner or later.After giving them instructions and leaving extra money to get things done, we left the country, after we had to make a stop at Europe once again, we boarded another plane and headed back to the States. Sandra came to see me as soon as she got the call that I had come back and I spent some time with her. The next day I met up with the football coach, and I had told him that I wanted a minor role, which was to be the kicker.I didn't want to overtax my body before the basketball season came, and for baseball, I'll just be batting and not pitching or catching. The coaches introduced the players to me as I got to know them all, and they also knew about me as a future NBA prospect, so they all had some respect for me.