By Saam Niami Jalinous
Akona starts and ends his day watching MTV music videos. I come home at midnight, and we watch “In My Feelings” by Drake for the fourth time today. He stays up to watch and talk with me.
Akona is one of the born frees of Cato Manor, KwaZulu Natal. Like Americans, this is a generation raised with the Internet. However, they are also deeply disillusioned by what they see as the stagnation of post-Apartheid South Africa after their parents were promised universal freedom. Yet, the similarities between the born frees like Akona and the youth of a frustrated America are more abundant than I had originally expected. The love born frees have for American hip-hop is one example of the many cultural parallels.
“Most important things to me,” he says. “Swag, fashion, music.”
Swag? I ask him. The word has too many meanings.
“Cool.” He says. “I gotta be cool. If I don’t got swag, if I don’t got fashion, if I don’t got music, I got nothing.”
He was a part of a modeling company that wouldn’t shoot him and his friends, so he and his friends started their own company.
“They didn’t care about us. They didn’t think we had it. So we said, ‘F you’.” He raises his middle finger. “‘F you, we better than you. We got more potential than you. F you.’”
His favorite things to talk about are girls and California, especially girls in California. I try to let him into my world by telling him how my friends and I run. Weed is legal in California. You can do whatever you want, I tell him. His face lights up at the possibilities.
He can’t read Zulu, unlike his friends. It’s one of the ways he chooses to impose distance between himself and those around him; but it’s a distance he feels acutely. He loves his family and his friends, but dreams of going far away, no matter where.
“People in town, they call me mama’s boy. They say I spend too much time at home. But I don’t like too many people. I like my friends, I chill with my friends. Why waste time around people who don’t really know me?”
I tell him travel is important, that’s why I came to Africa.
“Yeah man. It’s good here. We got it here. But everyone needs to get away.” I realize we are now talking about him. “You gotta go out, see the world. You gotta know how you are when you’re in other places. But you always gotta come home, or else you lose yourself.” He raises his hand and creates a wave in the air. “It’s up down, up down, that’s how you get peace. You gotta balance out your good with your bad. Old with new.”
I show him my tattoo, which is based on that very idea. That classic white smile shines out at me.
“Man, I want a tattoo. I want grills too. Gold necklace, nice shoes, nice watch. I want it all. Fashion, man.”
I lent him my neon jacket the other day, an essential wardrobe piece in California.
“Your jacket, man, we don’t have anything like that here. That’s what I love. I love seeing different things, new things. It gives me energy, gives me life.”
