Thursday night in Kabul is like Saturday night in other countries. To celebrate we threw an party in our compound and invited the locals. After carving up a couple of sheep into kebab, we invited the local band and got the place pumping - Afghan style. The boys showed their skating skills in our empty swimming pool, much to the delight of the locals. Nabil even got funky with his skateboard on the dance floor. Check it out here
Monthly Archive for May, 2008
Nabil Tanha:
Two weeks ago me and Mirwais were coming back from skating it was around 9:00 and we stopped a taxi and asked him to drop us to Klola Poshta the taxi driver who was around 40 to 45 years old, told us 40 afs (80 US cents). This was little bit surprise for us as we usually we pay 60 afs from there or if you bargain them down it will be 50…. so we sit in taxi and taxi driver start conversation with us and he tells us that he is very happy to see us with skateboards in our hand and he wants that all young Afghans start this sport. He really likes to watch this sport on Dish Satellite on the Extreme channel. He told us that he is watching Skateboarding for hours and he really enjoys it … When we arrived back at my office, he asked me if I can show him a trick. As you know there is not a good place for skating in our streets, so i take him to my yard where I have set up some carpet to practice my tricks on and i just show him how to do Casper …
The taxi driver is very impressed by our tricks and we talk more about in Afghanistan and how there are 3 sports that usually afghan youths do … Body building , Karate ,Taekwondo, Kung fu (I mean martial arts) cricket and Football .. this is ok, but there is nothing else. We like to do something extreme and more fun and skateboarding is perfect for us……..
Sharna made it to Kabul this week and is under taking the well needed funding drive to raise funds for shipping the donated gear to Kabul and buying land to build the school on. She has been real busy, has already got some results and in her spare time she went for a skate with the crew. Check out the images here.
The new Skateistan designs are available at Wax Musuem Records, Shop 2 Campbell arcade, Flinders street station, Degraves st, Melbourne. There are 3 different designs and 4 different sizes. We really need your support at the moment while we are getting things off the ground so if you are in Melbourne pop in and see Tim at Wax Musuem Records grab a t-shirt or 3 and check out the wicked selection of records. Anyone with one of the 50 original design Skateistan shirts have now got official collectors items!
So we have a new location to skate. The fountain is relatively smooth, its got all the characteristics of a ‘bowl’ and appears to be in a safe environment. We dont know how longer we can skate there, but until the skate park is built, its the best we got. Loads of kids came down to check it out and some even had a go. We know once we have completed construction of our park, we will be inundated with eager youth wanting to learn. Go to the Image Page for full coverage!
