Kiwanuka carries his roots to NFL

"Sometimes you'd see a lot of people killed, sometimes maybe just a person," he said. "Sometimes you'd see a stack of bodies on the side of the road as you were walking."

But Hali's mother wanted a safer life for her son. So she rounded up the children, hid in small villages and eventually made it to the Ivory Coast where she filed emigration papers for her son. Eventually Hali was reunited with his father, a teacher at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Teaneck High School, in New Jersey.

At first, the transition was tough. Hali couldn't even call his mom, and in the nearly 13 years since he came to the U.S., he still hasn't seen her.

It's a story that stunned NFL officials.

"I was overwhelmed not only with his story but by the way he told it," New York Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi said. "You could have heard a pin drop in that room when he finished."

Kiwanuka's story had a different twist.

While he managed to avoid the battlefields, the genocide and the political persecutions that were commonplace in Amin's Uganda, his grandfather could not.

Now Kiwanuka is taking his grandfather's legacy with him. A born leader who was twice elected captain at Boston College, Kiwanuka grew from a lightly recruited 195-pound high school senior into a 6-foot-5, 266-pound menace. He finished with a school record 37 1/2 sacks, 65 1/2 tackles for loss and 245 career tackles

Now he is on the verge of a big payday in the NFL.

But for Kiwanuka, his success has never been about money or fame. He just wants his family to be proud of him.

"They definitely understand what's going on, but I don't think they understand American football," Kiwanuka said of his Ugandan relatives. "I just want to uphold my family name."