Bigflips, air and ollies figure in today’s Geo Quiz. In the world of skateboarding — to air means like to jump or ollie, like off of something like a ramp. It’s like contemporary jargon ….The sport’s only been around since the 70′s.

The place were looking for today quiz … by contrast …. dates back some 3,000 years. Empires have clashed over his city that lies strategically along the ancient trade routes of Central Asia.

The modern city still shows sign of conflict…its been wracked by war since 1978. But putting rebels and militants aside for the moment. Some of this city’s population of 2 and half million have hopes and dreams for another kind of city.

There’s a new kind of school here just now taking shape. Where kids can play, and learn, and maybe even learn a thing or two about skateboarding. We’ll name this place here…

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The answer to today’s Geo Quiz is a place called Skateistan. Call it a dream project or an absurd fantasy. But an Australian ex-pat and a partner are building a skateboarding park near downtown Kabul. As The World’s Aaron Schachter reports, the project is aimed at bringing together Afghanistan’s disparate religious and ethnic groups – one kid at a time.

Percovich: “Welcome to the largest indoor sports facility in Afghanistan… or soon to be.”

Oliver Percovich and I walk into the shell of a building that should soon be a 19,000 square foot sports and education center.

Percovich: “Here we have one of the classrooms. We’ll have desks around and computers in here with high-speed internet – or at least as high speed as possible. And the idea is that the kids will do a half hour to one hour of other activities before they skateboard, and that will be cultural activities, tutoring… helping with what they actually learn in school.”

to the canteen, two workmen lay tile in identical bathrooms. It seems a small thing, but it’s a big deal here. If all goes well, beginning in the fall, 360 kids will come each week: half boys and half girls.

Percovich: “It’s all about the children playing together and having different ethnicities in the same classroom, which doesn’t actually happen, having rich kids and poor kids in the class that don’t normally mix, and building trust between them. Without having trust built you cannot build education in the country, health care will not work, rule of law programs will not work; any sort of change that a lot of people really want to see will not work.”

In 2007, 34-year-old Percovich followed his then-girlfriend to Kabul. The two started skateboarding here, at a cracked and pitted concrete fountain. Kids would gather around to watch the strange sight. Perkovich started loaning them skateboards, and soon created the non-profit Skateistan, hoping for donations to get gear for the kids’ so they could ride in the fountain.

Percovich: “I mean, it’s just got cracks everywhere, it’s dusty, it’s slippery, it’s not that easy to skate; and these kids skate it with sandals on.”

These are rich kids, poor kids, street kids, who would otherwise be washing cars or selling gum on the streets. Percovich uses some of the donations he’s already received to pay some families the equivalent of what their kids would have made working, about 60-bucks a month.

Last year, the Canadian, Norwegian and German governments put up a combined $120,000, and the Afghan Olympic Committee donated land for Skateistan’s indoor center. Ten year old Maharo Sawary is relatively well off; she lives in a nearby apartment and goes to school. She’s wearing jeans, a t-shirt and skateboarding sneakers she won in a competition.

Sawary: “I like this very much. It’s great exercise and it keeps you fit. Sometimes it IS a bit embarrassing doing this in front of boys, but skateboarding isn’t only for boys. We can skate too, sometimes better than the boys.

Maharo says her parents don’t mind her skateboarding, but the fact is she may only be able to do this a couple more years before societal pressure forces her to stop. It’s one thing for a girl to skateboard with boys, quite another thing for a young woman to do it . Another girl, who’s nine, looks downcast and says her parents don’t approve.

The gender issue isn’t the only problem. Many of these kids come from desperately poor, troubled homes, and some have acted out in destructive ways, like stealing equipment or hitting other kids. Percovich hopes some of these problems will be solved when they move into the indoor facility. But back at the construction site, Percovich concedes that being inside might create other problems.

Percovich: “So far skateboarding in a public space in Kabul we haven’t had really anybody say “stop what you’re doing, it’s wrong.” But, soon as we’ve got closed doors and walls where people can’t actually see in, maybe we’re going to come across all sorts of challenges that we didn’t have before.”

Even so, Percovich says those potential challenges are worth it if he can get a few kids to fall in love with skateboarding the way that he did as a kid.

For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter in Kabul.

More information:
http://skateistan.org/
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