An essential piece in the surf culture puzzle.
The African surf brand Mami Wata has released a dazzling 300-page hard-cover book Afro Surf, very high end, very sexy, “celebrating African surf culture.”
But rather than show us maps to secret spots and how to navigate buried land mines from ceaseless civil wars to waves we already have an idea exist, this book reveals the surf wonderland that is Africa through the only way to really get to know a place: via interviews and stories from its people.
Pro surfer interviews, mostly, are as exciting as coordinated copulation between mom and dad after an eighteen-year marriage and an almost paid-off mortgage.
It’s a little different here.
Afro Surf has taken an atypical approach to the interview/story by talking to surfers we’ve never heard of from countries we won’t see on any travel brochure. And it’s a refreshing and revealing angle on a tired and beleaguered equation.
We learn of Kunyalala Ndlove, born in land locked Zimbabwe. At twelve, he was handed a gift from his father that would change his life forever, a Billabong t-shirt that read, “Only a surfer knows the feeling.”
His best quote: “I can not describe the precise nature of the feeling I had, but I can say that is was on that day that this black kid from the suburbs of Bulawayo decided that he would rebel and become a surfer.”
We discover Micheal February chose the number 54 on his WSL jersey to represent the 54 nations (some disputed) of Africa.
We hear the voice of Kadiatu Kamara from Sierra Leone.
“It’s been lonely for me to be the only girl in the water with all the guys. In Sierra Leone, women are afraid of the ocean. They think there is evil in the water. And that makes them scared. But now they are having confidence and loving to be in the ocean and sharing waves.”
As far as pics of the waves, many fruits are shown but never exposed.