From Liberia to Sierra Leone, a nascent surfing culture.Jeffrey Gettleman writing in the NYTimes:
More here...on the outskirts of Freetown, along a perfect crescent of golden sand where little wooden shacks stare out at the sea and the palms hang heavy with fuzzy coconuts, the Bureh Beach Surf Club gives new meaning to the word resilience. No one here is bowing to the virus. Instead, the surfers seem determined to live out their passion as a way to cope.
image courtesy of Daniel Berehulak
The club was just getting going when Ebola hit. The idea behind the club, founded in 2012 by poor fishermen and run like a cooperative, was to enhance ecotourism, protect Sierra Leone’s pristine coastline and create some jobs. Bureh Beach is the only surf club in the country, and the 30 or so surfers in it eke out a living by renting out boards and cooking up beachside meals for tourists, who used to arrive in scores. These days, they mostly see the lone aid worker or a few others swept in to work on Ebola.
The sign at the beach’s entrance, scratched on an old surfboard, says it all: “Di Waves Dem Go Mak U Feel Fine.”
