You may or may not have heard of Blessing Ewona – she’s got a pretty sizable following on Instagram, she’s modelled for brands like Vivendii and Maxivive, and she’s got the kind of presence that’s kind of hard to ignore. I felt a kind of familiarity at the sight of her (and it’s not just because we both have bleach blonde hair and wear bikini tops like they’re shirts), and I had to reach out for an interview. I wanted to know what it was like for her, as a Nigerian womxn, to be involved in activities like skateboarding. Here’s what I learned:
1. Sometimes you don’t choose the scene, it chooses you.
Blessing fell into skating by accident. She’s originally a runner, who wanted to participate in the Lagos Marathon but was told she could only do the “fun run” because she didn’t have a trainer (she did, but he wasn’t in Lagos). She didn’t want to do that, and so she ended up drifting over to National Stadium, which is the main skating spot in Lagos. While she was there, a random guy asked her if she skated. She didn’t, but he encouraged her to try. “Learn to skate, e go fit you”, he said.
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2. Where would she be without Skate Kitchen?The first time I watched the indie coming-of-age film Skate Kitchen, I felt something click for me and I guess something clicked for Blessing too. “When I watched it, I was like, ‘wait, girls also do this?’ So what am I doing with my life?” she said. It was like an awakening, a desire that she didn’t know she could have. “I had to skate,” she said, “I just had to.”3. It’s never too late to learnBlessing is 22 years old, and she was 21 when she started to learn. From the clips she’s shared on her Instagram, you would think she was born on a board but like with anything, it’s about practice. 4. It always comes back to classElitism in skating spaces is to be expected – the scene is made up of a lot of middle-class kids, who don’t stay in Lagos year-round and can afford the gear. “The board is about 30,000 naira, and then you spend like 40,000 naira to get the trucks, and the wheels”. It all starts to add up. If you don’t know someone who knows someone, or if a publication like Vice isn’t knocking on your door to do a feature on you (which leads to more eyes on you, which can mean sponsors who can get you new gear every month or so), then you’re kind of screwed. 
5. Representation MattersI know you’re rolling your eyes, and I get it. It’s a cliché statement, the idea has been used to sell us things, and we’re all kind of tired of it. I know Twitter has rinsed it, but the thing about clichés is that they’re kind of true – that’s why certain ideas are brought up again and again. As Blessing noted, “Skating with guys is cool, but if you see other girls skate you’d be encouraged…like, ‘oh, I can do this too’ and I want more girls to skate”. She’s planning on starting a skate school for young girls who want to learn, once quarantine is over. All she really needs are the resources to provide boards and girls who are really about it. “I need people who will stick with it, not just people who will do it for one day and then leave.”6. Skater’s High is real “Once I step on a skateboard, I don’t even think. You know when you fall, and you like it? I’ve never felt that before” she says, and I know exactly what she means. It may sound kind of dramatic, but there’s something about that rush you get whether it’s the feeling of finally nailing a trick, or even something as simple as skating in a straight line without losing your balance.
7. Kick, push, repeat
Not to act like it’s that deep, but you learn a lot of life lessons as a skater. “If you don’t keep trying, you’ll never get it. You have to be consistent with whatever you’re doing”. It’s about doing something that scares you too, even if you fail, or you feel stupid, or other people are looking at you funny. You have to be patient too. “You can’t just get on a board and start doing kick-flips. You have to learn to move, and then olly and then olly over an obstacle, it’s step by step”
8. If you don’t have anything nice to say…
…you should probably shut the fuck up. I know that sounds rude – it’s supposed to. As with many Nigerian womxn who do whatever they want to do, Blessing has faced a lot of judgement from people because of her decision to skate. Unsurprisingly, some of the harshest words have come from older Nigerian women. She’s heard it all, from “you will not go to school”, to “this is a men’s sport”, to the simple-yet-effective, “ashewo”.
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9. Drip or drownI’m not saying that being a skater makes you dress better than everyone else – I have eyes, and I have an Instagram, and I know for a fact that isn’t true. Being a skater just gives you that extra dose of cool that you can use to trick people into thinking that you dress better than everyone else. Personally, I think Blessing kills it in the fashion department, but she’s pretty modest about it. “I don’t think I have a style, but let me explain the hair…I can’t be having boring hair, so I started experimenting…I’ve cut it, and I’m going to draw on it, put some colours on it,” she says. “It’s all about expression.”
