July 2
At macdonalds with my lovely girlfriend Jessica and her bestfriend Kori (who we trying to teach to be black)!!!!!!
White Chicks tryina pickout a brotha hair! That’s siiiiiiiiicccccckkkkkkk!!!!
July 3
Chillin with my other family! Having a great time talking about parents beatin us! And how they all use to be stoned when they were young!
July 5
Staying up the whole night with my bro Tarir! Leaving for Philly in the morning! Won’t be back maybe for a whole month summer basketball!!!!
July 7, Philadelphia
Met John Wall and Jason Terry all in the same day!!
Day three of Reebok breakout challenge!
Long day at camp! Played ok! Back in the room eatin! Tired like crazy!!
July 9
Last day of camp was pretty good! Great opportunity and has fun! Learned a lot of new things! Now waiting to leave for Saint Louis tomorrow!
July 10
Going to sleep! Flight leaving to Saint Louis at 7:30am! Then game at 10:30! That’s crazy ima retired by the end of high school!
July 11, St. Louis
One dryer and washer at the front. . . . That’s when you know your at a bad hotel!!! Lol
#whoeverimarry needs to know I’m African and I don’t tolerate them doing anything besides being a housewife!! Lol
Got to much stuff going on in my life!!!!!!!!!!
July 13, Minneapolis
Mall of America was fun! Back in the hotel chillin bout to go to bed!
Two games tnwrw here in minneapolish!!!
Time to prove I’m the best there is in the game! Going to win this tournament!!
July 15, Omaha
Finally home! Happier then ever!!! Missed my bed and everything!!
Bball takes me away from church, without the Lord I wouldn’t be who I am today! Time to go and pray!
Just got back from church, so happy I went!!!
July 18
So many choices. What to do. . . . . . . .
Man I don’t feel like cleaning this messing room! Shouldve never let it get this bad! Dangit!!!!
Feel like hoopin! Might just go do that!!
3 people kicked out of my house! That’s crazy!!!!!
Just found out we start school in exactly a month! #crazy
July 21, St. Louis
Just got to Saint Louis 8 hour drive #longride
@lilone_haha see when your African you don’t have to worry about getting sunburnt!!! Lmao!
Boring as hell! Ain’t nothing to do in Saint Louis! Ready to play but don’t play until later tonight! #timegoingtoslow
Won first game! Tired as hell! Going to bed! Goodnight!
July 24
@KodyGilbow @kingjames Lebron weak he my favorite player but he need to hurry take over the heat win his championships and be the greatest!
I need more followers!!!
Tell me why I am up watching this new cartoon called Thunder Cats! Lmao! Can’t fall asleep for some reason!
Just got our asses kicked!!!! Heading home tmwrw!!!
July 25
About to leave Saint Louis and head back to Nebraska the good life! 8 hour drive, damn long as hell! Super tired! Might sleep the whole way!
July 26, Omaha
Just got home! Damn home sweet home! Been gone too long! Ready to lay on my own bed!!
Man I’m going overseas to play basketball, skipping college!!
So bored!!!
July 27
@African_King_ mom trippin! I haven’t really been home!!!
Just got asked where I wanna go to college?! I’m not even a junior in high school how the heck would I know!!!
I need to go see Captain America!!
Yeah, Ima make a Captain Africa!!!
@S1McGary about too! Focusing on 2012 class now! But new offers from oregan, drake, western Kentucky, and Tennesse!
Tyrone is too damn hyper! Keeping me up from sleeping in my own damn house! #NotCool
“Ain’t nothing wrong with being dark!!!
Damn we start school in like less then 2 weeks! That’s crazy!!!
Ready to leave for Kansas City tmwrw morning! Let’s go! Bout to win this tournament!!!!
“House chores what a dragg!!!!
I’m rich as s white man come to you show and kill yo hypeman! I’m rollinn #lilweezy
finally 300 tweets! #proud
Watching Resident evil: Afterlife!
Watching the 1987 NBA finals against Lakers and Celtics! Kareem, Kevin mchale, Larry bird alm them playing!
Larry Bird just had this sick block! He cold!!!
This dude Pat Riley been around the game for a minute!!
I need a hook shot like Kareem!!! I’ll be cold!!!
Magic Johnson!!!!
@trelens2012 I’m serious man! I dont see no damn African superheroes in any movies!!! In movies in general!
Watching Blade 2
Dude dying in blade remind me of fruit gushers!!
July 28, Kansas City
In Kansas City won first game, almost lost too, to a bunch of 15s!
Need to shower! Hate to get in to shower, but when I do get in I don’t want to get out!!! #weird
Just got back from grocery shopping! Got a lot of food! #smash
Watching Troy! Black people don’t watch Troy! Lol
@trelens2012 gunna make TOO much money!!!
@Bongweezy24 @african_king_ dude I remember when YOU, George, victor and Ty, and augustino use to beat me up! Now I’m a beat!!!
My #CaptainAfrica movie bout to be sick!!!!!
I need to get more people for my movie tho!
@Bongweezy24 @african_king_ nobody can mess with me anymore!!
@African_King_ @bongweezy24 he is a midget and still is! It’s like impossible to fight a fast midget!!!
July 29
Just found out Kansas, North Carolina and a bunch of other schools coming to our game! Going to sleep now!!! Night! #excited
Got to get up early and go watch boring NCAA video!! #lame
Just went and had the NCAA talk and stuff bout all the rules!!!
Too hungry thank God we got my favorite cereal #Cinnamontoastcrunch
Eating cereal, watching Tom and Jerry, and listening to music!
Wanna go to sleep but got a game in an hour!!
Time to go! #gametime
Need to win!
Game earlier were down by 22 came back and won! I hit game winning layup with 2.9 seconds left in overtime! #intense
July 30
Won both games today! One game tmwrw either play at 3 or 7! Semis win then off to the championship on Sunday!!
Semifinals game: SYF vs Team Nebraska Express at 3:15!! #letsgetit
Beat SYF today buy 17. Championship game tomorrow at 10:15 vs the Saint Louis Eagles! Going to be a great game!
July 31
Watching GangLand this is #crazy
Eating that Live cereal #Cinnamontoastcrunch
Championship Saint Louis Eagles Vs Team Nebraska Express #GameTime
Lost to the Saint Louis eagles in the championship by 8! #shouldvewon
Oh well! Now it’s time to come back and improve
1–4 record this summer in championship games, need to improve! Gunna win everything next year!
Have so much to work on!!!!
Super tired and start school in two weeks! #wtf
I need to sleep for a month!!!!
I hope I picked up some more offers this summer!
Summer aau basketball is officially over! Had an okay summer, couldve been better!
Watching One Tree Hill
August 1, Omaha
For some reason I’m watching What I Like About You. . . . . Wow
August 2
About to go to see a movie
Cowboys & Aliens was a tight movie!
August 5
Went to take license test and on the computer it didn’t say I was a citizen yet so I needed my pape
r! #thiswhatigetfornotbeingamerican lol
August 6
Dad finally home! Surprised he ain’t get kicked out again! #nonsense
August 8
the baby hits his head on the table cries for 2 secs then goes right back! got a bruise by his eye badass
havent tweeted in a while lost my dang ipod #missit
August 9
Watching beauty and the beast! #oldmovies
End of the movie #BeautyandtheBeast where the beast becomes human! It’s so cute! Lol
@Bongweezy24 lmao you stupid! You don’t become soft because of a movie! #idiot
@FreakALeekk how old do you have to be to drink wine?!
Man school coming up! I swear I probably wouldn’t go to school if it wasn’t for #basketball
August 10
Working
Just took the longest to put together a shelf for my bosses daughter! #messeduptoomuch
Trying to play the piano! #foundanewtalent
What can I NOT do?!?!
Think I’m going to Red Robbins with boss and daughter #bouttosmash #starving
My job is pretty fun! #bestjobever
Listening to Lotte play the flute
The flute would be too hard to learn how to play!
use to play the viola in elementary school! #beast
Finally at 800 tweets! 1000 looks closer and closer
@TheyKnowSean oh aite! We should tell behrens to let us have a open gym up at central!
August 11
A 1000 tweets ain’t gunna come easy before school starts on Tuesday! #faster
Working longer then I thought! Oh well!
I’m that star up in the sky #theworldsgreatest
August 12
@D_OTTO24 at this office for like pregnant people! For my friends mom! Shes a doctor!
Got to get use to getting up early in the morning! School here in 3 days! #siiiiiiicccccckkkk
Early morning breakfast! #IHOP! Come hungry, leave happy! Lol
I swear people dont know how to drive these days!
I wish I had a twin! #siiiiiiicccccckkkk
Dropping basketball and taking a rapping career! #letsgooooo
The rap game is easy I’m fly like chris breezy! #letsgooooo
New Drake song Headlines is #siiiiiiicccccckkkk
What goes around comes back around! #Beyonce
Yeah I hate contacts! Take way to damn long!!! #frustrating
I make the young girls squeal!
August 13
Just saw the cutest little girl ever at target, she sounded like a little chipmunk #cantwaittohavekids
Don’t worry guys I’m going to wait
Tweeting till my fingers fall off!!
2 more days till nine months of hell #school
I’m fat #needtolooseweight bout to go on #biggestloser
How do you judge a tree?!?!?
August 14
Went to 2 church services this morning! #supertired
My mom is crazy!!!
This dude spongebob can’t sing! #nottalented
This dude maguy starts school tomorrow! Lmao! This bout to be funny!
August 15
Watching American Pie #funny
Watching A Nightmare on Elm Street
Took my brother to school first day of high school for him! #goodluck
I remember my first day of high school #supernervous didn’t even sleep! Lol
Man after two years I still don’t know my way around central #terriblememory lo
Working! Scanning papers!
I don’t like reading the news paper unless I’m on it! #justsaying
Ann Sjulin just thinks she #knows #everything!
Mrs. Sjulin just said she needs tape! Ima tweet everything she says!
How did this hapen Why did I let it hapen, It happened so fast culdnt control myself! It’s kinda good but not really! Dnt want to hurt any 1
1000 tweets!! #finallymadeit
11
Families
Home life was tense. Adaw and Madut struggled in their marriage.
“It was a time when my parents were up and down, arguing, fighting at the house,” Akoy recalled. They couldn’t be in the same place without something brewing up between them. I didn’t try to get involved too much. Every once in a while the argument got out of hand. If the kids were around, I would try to take them outside. I would tell my parents to calm it down or argue later when the kids weren’t around. I did what I could to help.
“My mom didn’t always work. With the babies she wasn’t always able to work. So it was my dad working and having to pay all the bills and my mom getting on him for those things. If we needed something, my dad would say, ‘We can’t really do this and also pay the bills; you need to get a job.’ My mom was trying to go to school and take ESL courses, and my dad says, ‘We’re struggling to pay the bills, and you want to go to school and get backpacks for the kids.’”
Marital stress came with the African refugee experience, an outgrowth of financial struggle, absence of extended family, and disruption of traditional gender roles. African wives asserted themselves as co-equals in the United States in ways they could not in their native lands. “The men resent some of these rights, and deem it unacceptable,” wrote Amadu Swaray, a divorce attorney in Minnesota and native of Sierra Leone whose clients were African. “They see them as challenges to their masculinity. In most cases, their reactions lead to frictions, which in turn, cause marital problems, and many of the marital problems lead to divorce.”
Adaw pleaded with Akoy to help with household expenses. He took his problem to Lotte, who relayed it to her mother. Ann was an obstetrician/gynecologist in a private practice. Her group occupied a building with a vacant first floor to be cleaned and a yard to be weeded. She offered the work to Akoy at ten dollars an hour.
“It won’t be easy,” Ann said. “Are you sure you want it?”
“I’m sure.”
Akoy worked two or three days a week throughout the last month of the summer, around his basketball schedule. Some of the work was in Ann’s office, scanning and filing. Sometimes Lotte dropped by, and sometimes Akoy joined Lotte and Ann for dinner. Akoy and Lotte drew closer, even as Akoy continued to see Jessica. A tweet from August 15, 2011, spoke to Akoy’s dilemma: “How did this hapen Why did I let it hapen, It happened so fast culdnt control myself! It’s kinda good but not really! Dnt want to hurt any 1”
Akoy’s junior year at Central began with a warning from his counselor, Bette Ball: his grades needed to come up to qualify for a D-1 scholarship. He took it to heart and started a before-school math tutorial, with the help of assistant athletic director Paul Nielson. He also asked for help from Ann, who agreed to hire him a math tutor. “But you have to do it at our house because I can’t get a math tutor to you,” Ann said.
Akoy found rides to Ann’s office at Seventy-Second and West Center Road at the end of her work day and rode home with her. He got tutored in math, ate dinner with the Sjulins, and stayed through the evening. Lotte, an accomplished student, helped Akoy in his other courses. He came to appreciate the Sjulins’ home for its well-stocked refrigerator, spaciousness, quiet, and dependable internet, in contrast to his own quarters, cramped with guest uncles and loud with rambunctious siblings. Sometimes he brought his laundry.
“Is Akoy loving Lotte, or is it that you’re taking care of him?” Dave asked his wife. “I hope he likes Lotte,” Ann said.
When Akoy stayed late, Ann drove him home, thirty minutes in each direction, but some nights he stayed at the Hammers’, who were closer by in west Omaha. Ann knew that relatives, friends, and colleagues were curious about Akoy’s presence and that the unspoken subtext was race. Her acceptance, she knew, came from the context of her own upbringing and faith. She was a fourth-generation Nebraskan from Sutherland, which had a mostly white population of 840, a Union Pacific train yard, and a few grain silos. Her father and mother had married after they met at the upper crust Ak-Sar-Ben Ball in Oma
ha. Then her father had gone into the grain business with his father-in-law. “My parents were always inclusive,” Ann said. “When we went places, if my mom saw someone by themselves, she would invite them to talk with us. My dad was friendly to everybody. They never thought anybody was too poor or too rich or too anything. They treated everybody the same.”
Sutherland had one ten-room motel, Ann recalled, that would fill to capacity when winter storms hit and I-80 was shut down. The motel asked Ann’s parents and other local residents to shelter stranded motorists. “We had a four-bedroom house, and my dad always said, ‘Yes, who do you have?’” she recalled. “We’d put people on our couch and in our bedrooms. That happened several times.”
Ann’s father once met a young man from Sweden over breakfast at a gas station, Ann recalled. The youth was on his way to school in California. A week later her father got a call from the youth in California; he had been denied admission and needed a job. “He came and lived with us for six weeks and painted our house,” Ann recalled. “I’m a seventeen-year-old girl in high school, and my dad never worried that a twenty-year-old boy was in the house with his daughter. My dad never knew a stranger. He would let anybody live in his house.”
Citizen Akoy Page 10