The Budumburam refugee camp in Ghana was a refuge for thousands and thousands refugees from Liberia, who fled the bloody civil war that destroyed the country in the 1990s and early 2000s. The squalid conditions of the camp were better than the utter destruction that the Liberians had fled, and many stayed in the camp for years, even decades, trying on the one hand to move somewhere else, or on the other hand to create a new life in Ghana.
In 2000 a baby was born in the camp’s basic clinic run by UNHCR. The baby’s parents had fled the violence of Monrovia, and had applied for asylum in North America. The little family nevertheless stayed five year at Budumburum before being able to relocate to Canada and start a new life.
The little boy, Alphonso Davies, would go on to be the youngest player to sign an MLS contract, the youngest player to debut and score on the Canadian national team, and the scorer of Canada’s first World Cup goal ever. He was signed by mighty Bayern Munich where he became the first Canadian to win the Champions League. Widely hailed as one of the best left-backs in the world, Alphonso Davies life started in the most difficult conditions imaginable, but he brought glory to his adopted country.
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