I have always thought of skateboarding as an extremely westernised past time, something that I take for granted and up until recently, this has been very much the case. However, an Australian by the name of Oliver Percovich has extended his love of skateboarding to the dangerous streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, with the hope of giving children there something positive to involve themselves in.
Percovich wishes to open a school he’s calling ‘Skateistan’ to begin teaching children the art of skateboarding as a way for them to interact with each other and help keep them occupied from the dangers that they face during everyday life.
If I was to go down to my local skatepark right now, the biggest problem I would probably have to deal with would be smashed glass. These children have to deal with people blowing themselves up, and then avoiding body parts whilst they skate. Never before have I felt that my problems are so insignificant.
An article published in the New York Times from January 2009, quotes a nine-year old girl named Maro saying that, “It gives me courage, and once I start skating, I completely forget about my fears.” Percovich has given to these children a distraction in which they can retreat whenever they are scared or worried about the world around them.
Any sport could have been the sanctuary that these children required, but it is not any sport that you get to make the rules as you go. Through skateboarding and it’s lack of boundaries, the participant is allowed to be completely free and do as they wish, something that these children do not get to experience very often.
The point of me writing this article is to gain some perspective on things; we complain about having to pay seven pounds to skate for two hours, or not enough street spots in Aberdeen. I hope that this post can help us realise that we have something that some people would do anything for, and we should not waste it.
Text by Colin Bruce
To see the original article click here.
2 comments:
It's really amazing isn't it? Alex Irvine and company are aparently going to go do a piece on Afghanistan for Kingpin Magazine. Should be a very interesting experience and will open up a lot of their eyes to something completely different and at the same time it will let us open up ours as we get to see how such a scene is in existence in such a troubled part of the world. Thanks in advance for this.
cant wait to get a squizz of that. man no easy mission by all accounts. good luck kingpiners.
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