A recap:
Keemo's father, David, born and grew up in Hopetown in region 5 West Coast Berbice. He used to play first division cricket. No surprise; an all-rounder. He ended up being a teacher. And moved to Georgetown to teach at North Ruimveldt Multilateral School. After a stint with teaching, being a man who loves his agriculture , decided to move to a village in the Essequibo river called Saxacalli.
That's where Keemo Paul was born and grew up. His name is all cricket centric, with the exception of 'Mandela' (who was David's idol) and Paul (their official name). Angus Fraser (Actually Fraser was the first name of David's father). David wanted to call him 'Keeno' after a Trinidadian batsman, but was given a better suggestion by the registry clerk at the office where he went to register him. So it was a 'Mo' instead of a 'No'. Keemo was the last of 6 children. The baby of the family.
So David used to bowl softballs at his son at a distance from 3 yards away in the yard in front of their home. Keemo was around 3 years old. This would continue for a few years after Keemo would be hitting the balls into the river, and it would drift away with the water. Most of Saxacalli played softball cricket.
So after writing common entrance (Secondary school entrance examination), he went to Wakenaam (where Sarwan and Travis Dowlin grew up), a few villages down the river, and clearly the largest one in the estuary. That's where he was introduced to hardball cricket. He was a wicketkeeper batsman. He made the Guyana uner-15 team as an off-spinning allrounder. His second year in the Guyana under-15 team he switched to pace. This switch to pace was a monumental moment.
While he was at a training facility in Barbados (Sagicor High-Performance Center), he decided to bowl some seam ups and blew his mates away with his pace. Coach Nedd (from West Berbice) saw this was said something to him to the effect of, "You are not an off-spinner...you are a pacer."
He didn't trouble anyone in the tournament, because David didn't mention anything about what happened afterwards. But when he came back to the club scene, he took his teams (Under-17 and Under-19) to finals and won them...his father said in the under-17 final, he took 7 wickets; and in the under-19 final he got the man of the match. He bowls, bats, and keeps for his club team. A true all-rounder.
And finally, a question was asked about his strength. David replied with, "He is a strong man. Sometimes he would lift me off the ground and say to his mom, 'Mom, look how your husband light like a feather'". His father credits his son's strength to the natural foods being grown in his yard. The plantains, eddoes, cassavas, the fruits, and ofcourse the fresh fish.
