Meet the brave girls changing the face of skateboarding in Ethiopia (original) (raw)
Through an all-female group dominated mainly by teenagers, the girls are finding their balance on their boards as they break down stereotypes and fight bullying and sexism.
(Set Skateboarding)
Just days after Helina Solomon had mastered control and balance on the board, she found herself on similarly uneven ground.
At a skatepark, her first main obstacle was not the high ramps but her safety.
Her passion for skateboarding was questioned and she became a target of personal and sexual attacks from some boys who couldn’t understand how this teenage girl was trying to flip the narrative, disrupting their ‘boy’s game’.
“It was not easy. The boys at the skate park bullied girl skateboarders. They harassed us when they saw us on boards,” Solomon said in an interview with Olympics.com from Addis Ababa.
“They would try to take our boards and sometimes there was even sexual harassment.”
The interactions gave Solomon more confidence over time and she stayed on to the boards eager to challenge the deeply ingrained cultural ideals of girls and women in Ethiopia.
She was even more inspired to develop skateboarding in Addis Abeba after watching the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in 2021, where skateboarding had its Olympic debut.
The then 18-year-old formed Set Skateboarding, an all-female group, which mainly skates on the streets of Africa’s second most populous nation.
Tokyo 2020 Olympics inspires Ethiopian girls skateboarders
Thousands of girls across the world tuned in to watch 20 young girls as they blazed a trail riding on the ramps and rails of the Ariake Urban Sports Park.
Among them were tens of teenagers from Ethiopia, who cheered the Olympic skateboarding pioneers and even sneaked out to ride and land some of the tricks they had watched on television.
One of the young girls was Helina Solomon, whose parents didn’t share their daughter's passion for the sport. It was seen as a sign of rebellion, going against the grain of the community which discourages ‘good girls’ from practising sports, especially an unfamiliar and unknown board game liked mainly by boys.
“I learnt to skate from my boyfriend. My parents were against me skateboarding, our society doesn’t support skateboarding. It is seen as a sport practiced by ill-mannered boys, and so it was hard for a young girl like me to go against them,” she recalled of her early days skating on the streets.
There were a handful of female skateboarders already skating. But still skateboarding for girls, whose main option was street skating, was frowned upon in the strongly traditional country.
“For me, I saw the boys had opportunities which the girls only dreamt of. Owning my first second-hand board was not easy, it was a donation.”
The Ethiopian skateboarding scene was changing, and the young teen was happy to be part of the shift. During the pandemic, she happily jumped on the skateboarding surge to promote the sport and grow the visual representation of girls who were stuck indoors.
Samrawit Teshome was among those who was influenced by Solomon to try a sport which she had only seen on TV.
“I saw Helina skateboarding and I liked it. I asked her if I could try, and she was like, “come and try”. I kept going every other day until I got hooked,” said 18-year-old Teshome, whose parents embraced her new obsession and only worried about her safety skating on the roads.
“Before then I had only watched skateboarding in movies. When I tried it felt really good, something new, different. I liked the vibe and the fact that I was winning against the traditional mindset that girls only need to stay and help out at home and not practice sports. Overcoming that traditional culture is something to be proud of.”
Skate sisterhood breaking taboos
“The first time on the board I was scared, afraid of falling. After mastering skating, the feeling was the best. I felt proud of myself,” Yordanos Yohanes, her teammate at Set Skateboarding chipped in.
“Whenever I skate, I feel free, I feel there’s nothing I can’t do, nothing holds me back because I am a girl.”- Yordanos Yohanes.
“I was a quiet girl who would stay indoors most of the time my parents were quite strict and worried about me being harassed,” she continued.
“But since I began skating, I feel braver. I feel I can do things on my own. I’ve gained confidence in facing different aspects of life. I fall once and pick myself up and keep trying harder until I achieve my goal.”
The girls have found greater peace of mind but are still fighting hard to spin the stereotype of “boys’ game” and break down sexism.
“People think that since we are hanging out in the streets, we are bad people or rebels with bad behaviour. They have wrong assumptions… they don’t know how much skateboarding has filled the emptiness inside,” the girls said of the widespread misconception of the skating culture.
“Skating at the park, the boys mock us or sometimes even take our skateboards. They feel like this is our thing, there’s no support,” added Solomon on their fight to push back sexism.
(Set Skateboarding)
Creating a ‘safe space’ for females to learn skateboarding
Skateboarding is now largely seen in the capital city, Addis Ababa, which has two of the five skate parks in the country. Board donations from well-wishers have also made the sport largely accessible to hundreds of youths.
But Set Skateboarding, one of two female-only groups in Ethiopia, longs to have a dedicated ‘safe space' for more girls to learn their sport.
“Girls want to skate but when you tell them, 'You have to come and skate on the streets', they say it’s dangerous. Our biggest dream is to have a safe space where we can skate freely, a park where the boys won’t laugh at us when we fall and kill our morale,” detailed Teshome during the interview.
“My desire is to have many more girls skating, I am happy to teach them for free, and share the joy. My dream is to build a skatepark and have a safe place for the girls where they rule the park,” Solomon, the founder of Set Skateboarding, who at 20, is the oldest of the group.
Her group boasts 29 devoted members, with the youngest aged only six.
She’s inspired by the success of another grassroots group, Ethiopia Skate, which in 2016 crowdfunded and built Ethiopia’s first skate park in Addis.
An ambitious dream to boost skateboarding amongst girls ignited by the success - of gold medallist Momiji Nishiya (Japan), Rayssa Leal (Brazil) who took silver and third placed Funa Nakayama also of Japan - the three teenage girls who stood on the Olympics' podium in Tokyo.
“I want to be professional… that’s my long-term dream. To be like Sky Brown some day, she's achieved so much,” said Teshome admiringly, of her British role model, who became the youngest professional skateboarder in the world aged 10.
“ Ultimately, one day, I hope to make the national skateboarding team and encourage more girls in Ethiopia and Africa to pick up the sport. But it’s not just about the destination, it’s about the way. On the way up, I want to help girls, learn tips from others [girls skateboarders] and exchange experiences.”
“ My dream is to be a living proof that you can do anything when you believe in it and give a chance to any girl who wants to skate," Yohannes concluded.