Growing up amid the flying bullets and soaring rockets of Liberia's civil war, "which claimed some 200,000 lives between Christmas Eve of 1989 and 1996," somehow Vancouver Whitecaps forward Ansu Toure's "entire immediate family — nine kids in total – survived," for which they feel "no better than the dead, just truly blessed."
According to The Province's Marc Weber, Toure "can tell you stories that will send you through a complete range of emotions — shock, sadness, anger, disgust, relief and even joy." In fact, he "can still see the scene at Freeport of Monrovia that day in late 1993 when his family fled to Sierra Leone. Thousands of arms and legs fighting to get on the Ghana Black Star, those left behind unsure they'd see tomorrow."
Now 27 and safe and sound playing soccer for the USL in the scenic and serene Pacific Northwest, Toure "soaks up the silence every morning when he wakes up" amid peace and without gunfire, and is quick to appreciate "the smallest of things and, of course, the biggest — his parents, his life."