Ethiopian Girls are skating their way to change

April 23, 2024
6:07 am

ETHIOPIAN GIRLS ARE BREAKING STEREOTYPES THROUGH SKATING

Over the past several years, the presence of skateboarding has slowly but surely risen among the bustling streets of Addis Ababa. For Sosina Challa, this left no question but to want to be a part of it. Watching many others take to the streets, she taught herself how to skate but noticed there wasn’t much of a space for them and other girls to be themselves. Challa decided to host the first all-girls skating session where she met Hana Beles, who goes by Bee. In the beginning, Bee says, ‘I used to go [to the skatepark] and just watch her.’ After the two met, they formed Ethiopia Girls Skate, one of the first female-only skateboarding groups in Addis.

They started this group simply because they wanted to skate. Bee says, ‘Being raised here, I did not see spaces like that where girls can just be, just free to have fun,’ but it’s become more than that. They’ve become an exemplar of what it’s like to be a part of something that goes against the status quo issues with gender and economic class. Bee explains, ‘For most girls, there’s a lot of pressure at home, in society, stereotypes… For guys, it’s just skateboarding, but for girls, nobody will give you that encouragement. They will say, ‘Why are you hanging out with a lot of boys… Just go back to the kitchen

The purpose in the beginning was to create a place where girls could skate and feel safe because that wasn’t always the case. Chasing down boys in the skatepark who would steal skateboards and disrespect shared space didn’t make the sport easy to enjoy. ‘In the beginning, there wasn’t a place where we could do our own thing,’ Bee says. ‘We started this project because there wasn’t any place for us.’ Sosi and Bee sought to fill in the gaps of their community through sport and enjoyment, but this feat also brought on more challenges that the founders had to face

Dealing with stereotypes against skateboarding, they needed to make efforts to convince parents to let their daughters skate with them. Bee says, ‘For some families, it’s when their kids fell and they had a bruise, for some families it’s because they think skateboarding is associated with drugs… For some families, it’s ‘No, you need to focus on school’.’ They decided to make personal connections with the parents, sending uplifting messages about their daughters’ progress and how much fun they were having, which eased the parents’ concerns and encouraged the girls to keep showing up. ‘We started talking to the kids and just making sure that they are safe with their friends… We made it a community,’ says Bee.

Perceptions of economic class became a challenge as well. When the girls joined each other, Bee says it took some time for them to get used to each other and says, ‘It was divided at first.’ Cliques would form based on different backgrounds. Bee and Sosi solved this by pushing the girls to do activities together: ‘We purposely mixed everybody. Just gave them projects together; teamed them up.’ This led to those cliques slowly disappearing; they started to see each other for who they are rather than the status in society they came from.

Skateboarding has meant more to the youth and to the development of Ethiopia’s future possibilities. With this new development, it became hard at times for the girls to coexist with other skaters at the park, sometimes even getting their skateboards stolen. However, this never stopped them from doing what they love on their Saturday mornings.

Oftentimes, you can find them skating together on neighborhood streets away from the bustling traffic of Addis, teaching each other how to do new tricks or balance on their boards. It’s here where you can see the clear comfort and joy that the girls have with one another. Bezawit Girma, their lead in communications, reflects on her thoughts about working with the girls: “I love them…there’s just some feeling…interacting with the girls, and just feeling like you’re making an impact.” The time they spend together does much more than just provide a place for the girls to skate; it’s simply a place where they can hang out and enjoy one another’s company. “Just being there, interacting with the girls, laughing, it’s not even about skateboarding. Just hearing everybody’s stories…their lives outside skateboarding…their school life,” Beza says. “Seeing these girls fall and get up, laugh it off, cry it off, it’s beautiful.”

Ethiopia Girls Skate’s desire is for people not just to know that they exist, but for people to understand how important and meaningful the community is to them. Bee speaks on the importance of having others know about Ethiopia Girls Skate and why it’s important that others invest in their community. “…they know of us, but they don’t know how hard it is to have this.” Over time, the girls were able to be recognized by organizations such as UNICEF and collaborate with brands such as Grind Like a Doll. Girma speaks of her future hopes for the girls. “I just want them to have opportunities, I want them to go see the world, I want them to compete, I just want their world to be bigger than what it is now.”

Ethiopia Girls Skate is hoping to reach the world with the message and the core of what they do. Bee says that “It’s not just skateboarding; it is women empowerment, it is home, it is sisterhood, it’s breaking stereotypes, it’s beginning a new generation with freedom.