skateboarding

Indigo Skate Camp teaches rural youth the joys of skateboarding, and gets some life skills woven into the curriculum as well.

From Australia to Afghanistan, Cambodia, Pakistan and now South Africa – Skateistan is using skateboards to offer a future to at-risk youth, particularly young girls. Skating is the hook used to get to grips with complex social issues facing the youth, such as social inequality, youth unemployment, gender discrimination and poverty.

By Yvonne Fontyn
16 August 2013

I used to be a bit of a quiet freak – if given the choice between, say, a disco and a Buddhist retreat, I would opt for the latter. So I would usually choose somewhere quiet for a holiday – a remote seaside cottage, a B+B in the country where I could relax and recharge my batteries which had been depleted by Joburg life. I have a retired mom in Durban so I head that way a couple of times a year, usually staying in nearby Umhlanga, which mostly moves along at a sedate pace. But this time I wanted to be closer to Mom, so I looked for places in North Beach, around there.

What about the Marine Parade? I took a chance and booked the Belaire Suites, which looked quite glitzy on their website. It’s a newly revamped high-rise – trendy, with a vibey coffee shop downstairs.

As I arrived, the staff seemed genuinely pleased to see me and after getting the key for my 10th-floor apartment I was soon piling into a lift with a festive crowd dressed in Hawaii shirts and sarongs. A little too festive? I wondered…

As I was letting myself into my apartment, a manager walked past jangling a big bunch of keys. He popped his head into one apartment then banged the door closed – Blammm! It resounded through the block. And then blam, blam, blam he went, down the passage. My heart sank and my anger rose – if those two things can happen at once. There was panic in there somewhere too. Had I signed up for three days in purgatory?

I could only survive, I decided, somewhere in my tired brain, if I ignored it, if I did not construe every banged door, every raised voice, as an act of inconsideration aimed at me. Egocentric, who, me?

And so I went down for lunch to the coffee shop, where a bouncy waitress came over and soon we were chatting about why I was there, the weather and so on. She wasn’t at all like most of the B&B owners I’d encountered on my travels – pretty reserved.

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