Boards against boredom: Libya rolls out first skatepark

The new playground has been financed by the US Embassy in Tripoli and built by the Make Life Skate Life NGO with the contribution of volunteers from all over the world. (AFP)

• Australian Wade Trevean, who designed the 800-square-meter Tripoli site, said volunteers had come from far and wide to help build it, a process that took about six weeks

TRIPOLI: Libyan Mohamed Abderraouf put a foot on his board and launched himself across Tripoli’s first skatepark, a welcome break in the conflict-battered capital with few facilities for bored young people.
“I can’t describe the joy,” said the 18-year-old, who bought his first skateboard in 2020 and had only been able to practice on street corners — until now. “I’m going to come a couple of times a week.”
The free, open-air facility opened over the weekend in central Tripoli, to the delight of young skaters who spent the afternoon sweeping up and down the halfpipes and taking selfies with their friends.
“I’m really happy, because before there wasn’t a dedicated place for skating,” said Rayan Al-Omar, 18, who has been skating for a year.
The US-funded facility was built by Make Life Skate Life, a charity that has set up “free-of-charge, community-built concrete skateparks” in Iraq, Bolivia and India.
Australian Wade Trevean, who designed the 800-square-meter Tripoli site, said volunteers had come from far and wide to help build it, a process that took about six weeks. “There are people from New York, people from Belgium, Germany or Australia,” Trevean said. “The happiness and positivity here are amazing.”
Local skaters played a role in the project too, part of a seaside park that also includes a cycling route and five-a-side football pitches.
The rest of the complex was completed a year ago on the site of a former base of the “Amazons,” the entourage of female bodyguards of deposed dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and seen as a symbol of the tyrant’s extravagance.
Since he was overthrown and killed in a 2011 revolt, Tripoli has endured successive waves of violence, meaning few resources were put into leisure facilities — already almost nonexistent under Qaddafi.
So almost two years since the guns fell silent following the last major battle on the edges of the capital, the opening of a skatepark in Tripoli generated a lot of attention.