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skate tales s01e04 13
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00:00Welcome to Ethiopia, the urban safari, Rastafari.
00:06I'm Matterzaps, and I'm on a mission to explore skateboarding's outside edge.
00:11Hop in as we travel the globe meeting skateboarding's mavericks to find out what skating means to them.
00:35The Lion of Judah just got to Ethiopia, one of the oldest countries in the world, second most populated country
00:43in Africa.
00:45And guess what, there's a skate scene out here. These guys from Ethiopia skate, they're hooking it up, built some
00:53skate parks around here.
01:09Ethiopia skate was born in 2013 at the Sarbet parking lot in Addis Ababa.
01:14They work to empower youth in Ethiopia by providing access to skate equipment and creating skate spots.
01:21Their community consists of over 150 skateboarders in Ethiopia's capital and other small towns across the country, with many more
01:29eager to join.
01:30In April 2016, they teamed up with Make Life Skate Life and a team of over 60 volunteer skate park
01:36builders and skaters from around the world
01:38to build Ethiopia's first and only free of charge public skate park, the Addis Skate Park.
01:44More recently, in November 2017, they built Ethiopia's second free of charge community skate park, the Hawassa Skate Park.
01:54Ethiopia skate house, let's check it out.
02:05Fiona Mendes Bueisi
02:06What's up, What's up, I love?
02:07I'm Manners.
02:09Naram.
02:09What's your name?
02:10Hennok.
02:11Henoke?
02:11Yeah.
02:11Dramar in.
02:12What's your name?
02:14Babuji.
02:14Manners.
02:15What's up?
02:15Rued.
02:16How are you?
02:16What's your name?
02:17Rued.
02:17Rued.
02:18This is the Ethiopia skate house.
02:20I live with Babu, Henok, Yabi, Aurelio, Charlotte and Sean.
02:25Where are you from?
02:26I'm from California.
02:27What are you doing in Ethiopia?
02:29I just met these guys like six years ago
02:33and pretty much stayed most of the time.
02:36I'm trying to help them get the whole skate thing going,
02:39trying to make more skate spots
02:41and create more opportunity through skateboarding.
02:45Awesome, man.
02:46Yeah, man.
02:47UKPS Skate is basically an unprofitable organization.
02:50We're working out here to more grow after skateboarding
02:54and at the same time empowering the youth,
02:57empowering the youth through skateboarding.
03:01I'm uncomfortable, bro.
03:03Comfort.
03:04The kids are doing really well living in the skate house
03:07and I think that it's a great opportunity for them
03:09to see more of the world in a better light
03:13and maybe it will give them more opportunity to grow
03:15and have that same life for themselves.
03:23Trying to get a permit to skate here.
03:25Just trying to hit the streets of Ethiopia.
03:27They were all good.
03:28Smell it.
03:28I think they were all good.
03:32It's all good.
03:33I think they were.
03:40We'll be back.
03:41We'll be back.
03:46We'll be back.
04:00We start skating together every Sunday at the parking lot in Sarbet.
04:05We used to skate in the parking lot with all the struggles of local bullies coming and
04:12taking away boards from little kids.
04:15But that was kind of our spot, that's where we started.
04:21This is the founding skate spot.
04:24This is where Etebri Skate started skating from scratch, you know?
04:27Since 2012.
04:28That was the first day I skated with these dudes.
04:30We had the first skate competition here and that was, we brought one quarter pipe made
04:34of bamboo, we brought a rail, we brought, and like one kicker I think, you know what
04:40I'm saying?
04:40That's all we needed to have a skate competition.
04:48That's it.
05:09Well, it's called squeeze chicken.
05:12The first time I came to Ethiopia was in 2011, and I was doing projects for a non-profit
05:18that was dealing with health issues in the countryside, and then randomly met these kids
05:23skating on the street.
05:24There was like maybe 20 of them sharing five boards.
05:27I was like taking pictures of them skating, and they were like, why don't you help us
05:31make a skate park?
05:32We really need it.
05:33I don't know.
05:34That day, I actually like canceled my flight, and I just stayed for six more months.
05:40We made a collaboration with a German skate park building company called Make Life Skate
05:45Life.
05:46And we did an online fundraiser, and after that, it was easy.
05:51We got about 60 volunteers from more than 20 countries.
05:54We all lived in the same kind of big house, and in 16 days, we built around a 600 square
06:02meter concrete skate park, the first skate park in Ethiopia.
06:09Skate park is fire!
06:11I remember five, six years ago, nobody knew what a skate park was.
06:15Now little kids are growing up, you know, having access to skate parks, coming and seeing skateboarding.
06:21So, you know, that's how it's been going on.
06:23We shared boards with each other.
06:25We are a family, and this is like our home.
06:46We are a family, and this is like our home.
06:56We are a family, and this is like our home.
07:07We are a family, and this is like our home.
07:27We are a family, and this is like our home.
07:27We are a family, and this is like the family.
07:36We are a family, and this is like our home.
07:45It's all about Addis Ababa, okay?
07:49First Ethiopian hip-hop video with skateboarding in it.
07:52Oh, yeah!
08:06Ethiopia Skate is the organization that started skateboarding in Ethiopia.
08:12So a lot of people recognize it as the company that actually promoted skateboarding.
08:18Actually, after we built the skate park,
08:20then people are like, yeah, okay, now we see that it's actually a sport.
08:27Through this five years' progress,
08:29we became more accomplished and the community more known about what skateboarding means.
08:36So, yeah, it's better right now. I'm happy about it.
08:56It's 7 a.m., and it's time to go on a road trip.
09:00We got a five-hour drive ahead of us, not much sunlight,
09:03and these guys are still drinking coffee, dude.
09:19It's time to leave Addis and go to Awassa.
09:22On the way, we're going to stop by Shashamane for a little visit.
09:27Shashamane is the delegated land for all black people of the world,
09:32and Haile Selassie was the first leader in Ethiopia that said,
09:36all black people of the world, I will give you this land, come back.
09:40And the first ones to respond were the Caribbean community.
09:44So, yeah, there's a big community of Rastafarians there.
09:49He wasn't just a king, he was just also a father to the whole of Africa.
09:53So, because of his appreciation of those African descendants
09:57from the diaspora all over the world,
10:00he decided to give a land grant, a gift, to these people.
10:04When you meet the real Rasta, you will know him by his movement,
10:08by his thought, by whatever he transcends.
10:13Rasta see Christ in Solassie.
10:27Is it cool growing up in a beautiful place like this?
10:31Or would you rather be in some other African country?
10:36In Hawassa, I just spent the night in a campsite by the lake.
10:39There's a bunch of monkeys around here in the morning.
10:44Oh, my God.
10:52In Ethiopia, the coffee ritual is a vital part of the culture.
10:59We're about to have some breakfast.
11:01They got avocado, eggs, and food.
11:04They cook it up however you like it.
11:08Street style.
11:09What's up.
11:19Who laid out.
11:30Yeah.
11:36Oh.
11:52Just got to the skate park, that was built two years ago by this guy.
11:58Yeah so my first trip to Ethiopia was in 2016 and then a year later Sean hit me up asking
12:04me if I wanted to come out to help build a park and it was here in Owasa.
12:08And we had 15, 16 volunteers, it was like a 30 day thing, 14 hour days building this skate
12:15park and like no real idea of what we were building but it was just like everyone coming
12:18together trying to collaborate to build whatever we could for the kids to skate you know.
12:22Our guy there, Jimmy Carlos, he has a small taekwondo dojo and because of that he's really
12:28respected in that youth center.
12:31Skateboarding here is so ground roots.
12:33The way I described it at one point I was like this is like a dog town era of skateboarding
12:37here it's like but no one's seen any magazines, no one has any real knowledge of pro skateboarders
12:41or maneuvers.
12:42To me that's what keeps bringing me back is like being able to see the growth of the kids
12:47and being able to just see the smiles on their face when you can bring them something that
12:50they don't have access to get and when they get a new board it's just going to push them
12:53further.
12:55There's about like 20 boards over here that need to be upgraded because they're all already
13:00skated down, worn down.
13:02In Ethiopia it's not easy to get boards so we brought some, we're setting them up and
13:07then that's how they call the boards here, kushineta.
13:16It's just to carry around product from shop to shop, switch this to this, give me this,
13:24and can I have that?
13:26This goes on my wall back home.
13:28This goes on.
14:19Here comes the rain, baby.
14:21We have such a cool group of friends here and we're able to do so much with so little
14:26and it's just fun to be part of that.
14:29To see the impact right away, I think we can really make some changes for the better.
14:34Back home I would be working or I'd be thinking about myself if I was back home or hanging
14:39out with friends and stuff.
14:40But here we're part of something.
14:47We came to Hawasa, another little town, skated a skate park, gave away some boards and now
14:55beautiful lake.
14:56Hopefully we'll see some wildlife.
15:03There you see the wild hippo.
15:09There you go.
15:25Anyone that comes into the country is bringing boards.
15:28There's no skate shops.
15:29There's no skateboard distributor that is bringing stuff here.
15:32There's no opportunity for any skate goods here to be bought.
15:37There you go.
15:42Enjoy skateboarding.
15:43Be happy.
15:44Skateboarding here is something that keeps kids out of trouble and they're able to just
15:49kind of get together.
15:50Kids from all backgrounds are skating together here.
15:52It's bridging gaps in Ethiopia and outside too because now these kids know people from so many
15:57different countries and they're inspired to learn more English so that they can communicate
16:02with skaters.
16:02There's so many ways where it's positive.
16:05Skateboarding creates community that otherwise wouldn't exist and friendships that wouldn't
16:10exist.
16:10A lot of people want to support but they don't skateboard so they want to buy a product that
16:15they can hang up on the wall and remember us by.
16:17And especially because it's made of our own skateboards.
16:19In some way like we're trying to bring the skateboard scene into the business so like that way everybody
16:26can benefit and get a little bit cash in their pocket.
16:33Instead of just carrying the wood on this little car we're going to get a pickup truck so that's
16:37the first mission of the day.
16:39So like the option is like the track is not here so like we're going to take another track.
17:00You see a lot of collectives growing everywhere in the world like artistically and all of them
17:05become one of their entity but together also one entity and that makes them stronger and
17:11they blossom together you know.
17:14So Ethiopia Skate is everybody, everybody with their own thing and also as a collective like
17:20maintaining a narrative of like a skateboarding culture yeah promoting a creative world in general.
17:26There's so much that hasn't been done and it's pretty cool to be able to make an influence
17:31somewhere where everything's already kind of happened and back home.
17:34Yeah.
17:35So it's cool to be able to be part of something like going from the ground up and if we
17:40can
17:40give the youth more opportunity and more say in what happens I think that it could be a
17:45better future for everybody.
17:47Yeah.
17:49You see it?
17:50Yeah.
17:51Perfect.
17:52Oh yeah!
17:53Yeah.
17:53But in Azababa the growth is so rapid in the city that we're trying to empower the kids
17:59to have access to learning stuff that's going to help them make it in that world.
18:03They don't have the skills to make money to perpetuate this like the lifestyle they want
18:09to live and I think that's what Ethiopia Skate is doing is empowering the kids to make it further
18:14in life.
18:15Yeah.
18:16Wow.
18:17Three hours building this thing so now we're skating finally.
18:29I want to see the kids get somewhere whether it's the Olympics or through skateboarding just
18:36including the artistic thing that they're trying to do on the side too.
18:39And Ethiopia Skate would have a lot of skateboarders under it and we keep on spreading the sport.
19:08And it's going to be time!
19:18Yeah!
19:19Yeah!
19:19What's all this?
19:20Oh man!
19:22You skateboarding is about, trust?
19:25Dang it, dang it!
19:26Trust you!
19:29You gotta believe, man.
19:31Where does skateboarding feel?
19:33Skateboarding is everything for me.
19:37that's a freedom basically like i love it i think pretty much everyone probably said
19:42skateboarding is freedom to them but but i think that's might be the answer you know
19:45like riding on a skateboard is one thing but it's for me it's more about what i build around it
19:51like
19:51what do i use using that infrastructure like the sport is already attractive which is a privilege
19:58by itself it's very easy to lure someone into skateboarding so that creates like connections
20:05networking a lot of people start being interested in you so using those tools i just want to make
20:13sure that what i'm building around it just holds the skateboarding together and you know like it
20:18becomes a big thing so that's what skateboarding is for me what can i say the ethiopia skate crew
20:26is skateboarding at its most fundamental a group of skaters from around the world hook up in
20:31ethiopia and help establish the birth of a scene two skate parks later something is blooming here
20:37in a country where life is tough but the passion for skateboarding is maybe stronger than anywhere
20:42else i've been community man it's all about community until next time
20:56hop
20:56once
20:56to
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