“Eating with my hands on a construction site at three in the morning, sharing food with everybody. A humbling experience.”
The bet
Ask Mike Boisvert which African country has the biggest skate scene and he'll tell you South Africa, without hesitating. Ask which one is coming for it and the answer changes. “Ethiopia is getting there. It's going to.” When he was in Addis Ababa, six skateparks were under construction at the same time, in a region where a single new park is national news.
The skaters are the contractors
The number isn't the interesting part. Who's holding the trowel is. The city contracts those builds to the skaters themselves, who have registered construction companies and pour their own parks with public money. “They're DIY skateparks funded by the government. That's really, really special for Africa.” Mike lived, ate and skated with the builders for ten days. Outside South Africa, he's seen no other country on the continent investing like this.
Where to skate
Sarbet is the flagship: the crew's first big project, close to the biggest park in Africa, and unlike anything else Mike has skated. Ghion is the new one, seven minutes from an airport that sits inside the city centre: smaller, but as central as it gets. Hawassa, seven or eight hours south in the mountains, is the countryside park. Another large build is going up right now.
Three skaters to know
Aberham Tedesse (@aberhamsk8) is 11 years old and throwing himself down stair sets taller than he is, with a style that already looks finished. “For Africa, that's really rare to see a guy this age doing this type of stuff.” Yonas Sk8 (@yonassk8) is the most skilled skater in the country and the one winning contests, and one of the crew's main park builders, which is exactly why he doesn't skate as much as he should. Addis Girls Skate (@addisgirlsskate) is a collective that gives free lessons and shoots in traditional Ethiopian dress to represent their culture. Mike's video with them has 1.2 million views. Roughly 30 women skate in Ethiopia, and this crew is why the number keeps moving.
The crew behind it
All of it traces back to Ethiopia Skate, started well over a decade ago by Bini, an Ethiopian who learned to skate in Germany and brought it home. “They were only skating in a parking lot. But this guy is smart, and he had connections. He does a lot for the community.”
The story Mike keeps telling
Ethiopia has its own script, was never colonised, and shares everything, food included, hand to mouth, whether or not you've been skating in the dirt all day. At three in the morning on a construction site, dinner arrived and the crew fed him by hand. “My hand was black. Everybody's dirty. And they just feed me. Okay, all right. It is what it is.” He tells it as a horror story and a love letter at once.
If you go
English is widely spoken and Addis is modern. Awash National Park has the waterfall; the Simien Mountains have the view; safaris run across the country. Getting boards into Ethiopia is still the hardest part of skating there; bring what you can carry.
Mike Boisvert: “I love that they're building skateparks there. That's rare in Africa. The other countries are not like that.”
Also going viral on Instagram
Watch the full Ethiopia series
Photos and video: Mike Boisvert / The Skate Nomad. Part of the JACKALOPE Skate Atlas, one country at a time, with the skaters who live there. See every country on the map.
