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Becoming a skateboarder in Kenya: My story

I went to visit my friend at Uhuru park; he told me he was a skateboarder. I had seen movies like street dreams and I was looking forward to see him skate and if he was as good as Paul Rodriguez,  scratch that -- that's overshooting. On the other hand, I could be wrong.



When I got the "park" it was a different story. I talked to some of his friends while I was waiting for him at the "park", people even called it the "skate park".When I looked at it -- it was just a staircase made of concrete some of it was a bit worn maybe because people were grinding on it. As I waiting at 2p.m in the afternoon, there was only one skateboarder called Murage. I asked how he got into skateboarding and he told me that he watched a video called wake up which you can find here, another arrived and I asked him the same question and he said he watched play skate by Ibra. The narrative was that they were inspired by Leo, Deecy, Kelvin's part that's for the wake up video. Maguta had not arrived yet so I payed attention to what other skateboarders were doing. 

"Wait, that was jumping with skateboard in the air -- how does he do that?",Were their robes in his feet?" I recalled that the skateboard had a particular shape like a concave on each side maybe if the hit the board really hard, they bend their knees, alongside dragging their foot up the board then that's the ollie!  Others liked frontside 180, others shoveits, 360 flips even a fullcab

I asked George where Maguta was he told me he's in Kile hitting a spot and he'll be here shortly. To fed off boredom I decided to ask someone for a board to try and skate; It was really loose that is, the trucks were I felt as if I was dancing on the board while moving I didn't know any tricks but I was just pushing the board around slowly with my feet (Regular stance) as I waited for him. Then someone called Deecy arrived he did tricks that nobody did there. He said, they were just no comply's. I found no comply's interesting I even tried to do one but those where beyond me to be honest. 

It was getting late and I was now worried if he'll show up but to my surprise he actually did. And that captures it my story of how I learned to skate but it doesn't end there. Later, I bought a few pieces of skateboarding equipment that is a deck, wheels and bearings from the Xone skateshop which talked about in a previous blog you can find here. During the time of meeting with Maguta I told him that I didn't have trucks then someone called Rob lent me his after hearing about my situation since he thought that he won't skate again for a very long time. So that's the story of how I began skating started there, a brief lesson and the kindness from a complete stranger. How did you get your equipment just leave your story in the comments and will get back to you soon.

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