Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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36 MARCH 2019 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2019 FOOTBALL RECRUITING ISSUE BY DAVID MCKINNEY "It takes a village to raise a child" is an African proverb that highlights the significance of a child's environ- ment in his upbringing. Notre Dame safety signee Li- tchfield Ajavon has lived in some unique environments in his short life, but his "village" has never changed. Every village has a leader, and the head man in Ajavon's is his grand- father Biomah Binda, who Ajavon looks at as his father. For 17 years, Binda and his family lived in exile at the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana, Africa, after escaping the unrest brought on by civil war in Liberia. In 2007, when Ajavon was 6 years old, his grandfather decided it was time for a change — after almost two decades in exile — and brought Ajavon, his mother and other family members to America. But immigrating to the United State from a refugee camp isn't an easy undertaking. "The process of coming to the United States is a very long and tir- ing process," Ajavon explained. "I had to go to a lot of orientations and lot of meetings." Ajavon and his family did eventu- ally make it to America and settled in Baltimore, but their troubles didn't end there. "I remember when we got here, I had a pair of pants, a shirt and a pair of sneakers I bought just for the oc- casion," he said. "I traveled with that and that alone, and I wore the same pants and shirt for quite a while." Just as he had back in Africa, Binda got to work on getting the people counting on him to a better place. "He found us a place to live, he tried to better his life and my life," Ajavon said. "He went to school as an elderly man, graduated at the top of his class and is still working now, six days a week, at well over 60 years old." Ajavon and his family were set- tling into an American life, but the adversity wasn't over. The threats facing Ajavon in Maryland were far different from the ones back in Ghana, but they were threats all the same. "Even when I came to the United States, there were a lot of difficult decisions I had to make as a young child navigating the streets of Balti- more," he said. "I could have fallen to the side of the road like most of my friends." But he didn't, because his village was as strong in Baltimore as it was in Ghana. If it hadn't been, Ajavon's life may have headed off in a drasti- cally different direction. "I was so blessed to have a strong network of people around me, and a It Took A Village To Get Litchfield Ajavon To Notre Dame Ajavon moved to the United States from a civil war refugee camp in Ghana, Africa, at the age of 6. PHOTO BY WILL GARLICK/COURTESY RIVALS.COM "I was so blessed to have a strong network of people around me, and a set of values and morals to guide me through everything." AJAVON