Afghani kids learn way to skate through life

I am fascinated with professional skateboarders. These guys “ollie” off of huge staircases, rail slide down steep ledges and maneuver in vertical half-pipes that are 50 feet high. Anyone who claims that skaters aren’t incredible athletes needs to get his or her heads examined.

It is essential for these guys to be completely focused and determined. There is no margin for error because a mistake in a skater’s world can lead to death.

In Afghanistan, a country where walking down the street can be as dangerous as attempting a “720” in a half pipe, kids are being introduced to skateboarding with amazing results. These children have become accustomed to bloodshed on a daily basis and they crave an outlet from this violence.

The mastermind behind Afghan skating is Oliver Percovich, a 34-year-old from Melbourne, Australia. He plans to open the first skate school in the area by spring and he wants to call the school “Skateistan.”

“Teenagers are trying to dissociate from old mentalities and I’m their servant,” Percovich said in a recent interview with the New York Times. “If they weren’t interested, I would’ve left a long time ago.”

What the children lack in X-Game skill is made up for in sheer enthusiasm.

Maro, a nine-year-old girl who spoke through an interpreter to the New York Times, said, “It gives me courage, and once I start skateboarding, I completely forget about my fears.”

It’s incredible how Afghani kids’ normal lives are more dangerous than Tony Hawk’s gnarliest trick; maybe that’s why they aren’t intimidated by the sport.

Percovich didn’t come to Afghanistan with Skateistan in mind. He arrived in 2007, following his girlfriend who moved to the country after taking a job in Kabul. When the couple split up, Percovich was left broke and alone in the war-torn nation. All he had was a skateboard — the mode of transportation he’d used since childhood.

The Afghani children were fascinated by Percovich’s board and they made his problems disappear by encouraging him to do skate tricks.

“I was banging my head against the wall, saying, ‘What am I doing with no money,'” Percovich said. “But in the afternoon, I was laughing and skating with kids running toward me saying, ‘Oli, Oli, Oli.'”

This enthusiasm motivated Percovich to organize afternoon skate sessions that eventually got so popular he had to find a larger piece of land to accommodate all of the kids. The idea of Skateistan was born.

It is heartbreaking that these children not only endure daily violence in the street, but repression at home as well. Because Muslim rule does not allow girls who’ve reached puberty to interact with males outside of the family, many young Afghani women may be forced to give up skating.

“If my family doesn’t let me skate when I grow up, and they tell me I need to be at home, then I have to respect my family,” Maro said. “I won’t be able to skate.”

I hope that these kids are given the chance to continue skating, rather than having to succumb to the horrors of their realities. According to the United Nations, Afghanistan has the highest proportion of school-age children in the world. These kids have the right to be kids.

With $120,000 in outside government assistance and countless donations from skating organizations, Percovich is providing something that these children have desperately lacked most of their lives; a sense of hope.

Grady Dunne is a senior journalism major and an assistant opinions editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.