“I first fell in love with skateboarding as a young kid. Me and my brother started to skate around our neighborhood in Skövde, Sweden. Skateboarding became a big part of my everyday life. My friends and I started a skate crew and all the days we spent together were amazing. Skateboarding gives you the opportunity to be creative on so many different levels…
I got involved with Ethiopia Skate by chance. As many things in life happen at random, the more you travel, the more people you meet. I have always loved that about traveling around the world. Getting to know new places. I originally traveled to Ethiopia to work as a photojournalist interning at an English newspaper. On one of my first days in Addis, after doing a story on the National Museum, I saw one of the skate kids with a board and asked if I could try it. He ended up giving me the number to Sean. Sean Stromsoe (from LA) founded Ethiopia Skate with Abenezer Temesgen, who lives in Germany but is originally from Ethiopia.
I met up with Sean and that ended up being the beginning of our friendship. We worked on the ramp and the Skateboard Journey video.
The skateboard energy there is vibrant. Lots of fantastic people are skating in Addis. It’s a group of young kids that have a positive outlook on the sport. Skateboarding is relatively new in Ethiopia so there is really no misconception. I think (would like to think) that people will embrace the skate culture in Ethiopia and the whole continent of Africa. The country is still developing so there are not too many places to skate so we skate the streets like in the EU and USA, which sometimes is unwanted. But unlike most countries where there is a skateboarding community, Ethiopia has no real skate park. We have built some ramps and gotten some stuff from donors but we’re still looking to make a skate park in concrete that can stand the rainy season and be the cornerstone for Ethiopia Skate and for anybody who would like to skate with us! #wejustwanttoskate
Things can always get better, you just have to take action. If we move forward together, we can create together. That is my goal…to keep creating, learning, traveling to meet new people.”
090/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project
**For more information, visit http://www.ethiopiaskate.org; https://www.facebook.com/EthiopiaSkate/; http://instagram.com/ethiopiaskate; http://www.thomestifanos.com/**