Early Life
Aboya was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon to his mother, Kedi Kofane Angele, and his father, Baliaba Aboya Casimir.
He graduated from high school in Cameroon and then attended prep school at Tilton School in Tilton, New Hampshire. He was recruited by Tilton coach Scott Willard, who had only seen a picture of Aboya soaring for a slam dunk. The school was looking to grow its international student population, and it was developing an English as a Second Language program. Tilton had never had any students from Africa, while Aboya spoke a couple of languages—none of them English—and he was a star in two sports including basketball. Though he had already graduated from high school, Aboya was willing to sacrifice two years at Tilton as a path toward an American university education.
He was a raw player when he began at Tilton. He became a dominant center by his senior year, and he drew attention from colleges like Georgetown and UCLA. On a visit to the West Coast, Aboya became friends with Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who grew up near him in Yaoundé.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)