One Love, One Board

Surfing means different things to different people. I remember as a kid being painfully shy. I barely spoke, refused to play team sports and shied away from all public occasions, even my good friend’s parties in our early teenage years when we’d just started hanging out with girls. I just didn’t want to go.

I wouldn’t say I was reclusive, but I was hardly outgoing. Maybe it was a confidence thing. For me it all changed when I found surfing. In my quiet little world I’d harboured silent dreams of riding waves and one afternoon my dad took me down to the beach with a large yellow foam board, a garish yellow foam atrocity that drew plenty of attention for someone so retiring. Apparently though (I don’t remember this) I seemed not to care.

I remember the feeling of trimming that weighty foam barge to the beach, of falling and collecting it up by the leash to then charge back out through the waves to snag another. I remember the terrible neon wetsuit bulging with my baggies underneath, the booties tucked over the top and many other surfing faux pas’ that clearly singled me out amongst the crowd as a beginner, but for the first time I didn’t care. For me surfing was a real turning point.

Since then much has changed and surfing has taken me off around the globe and now, to Masiphumelele where I set up and run the Ticket to Ride Foundation together with three other trustees – two from Masi and one from Fish Hoek School. Together we use sports to educate kids from socially challenged environments, and to encourage them to realise their own potential in an environment that continually tries to keep them down. Amongst these sports is surfing, and every week we take kids from the townships to the beach where they begin our surfing course and take the first steps to becoming responsible users of the ocean, and successful and responsible members of society.

On Saturday of last week we teamed up with local Muizenberg artist Claire Homewood for the first of several painting and art workshops that will lead to the creation of one of the boards on auction at the Wavescape Surfboard Art Auction. We picked up five boys from the project in Masi and headed over to Cavendish Noveau cinema to catch the afternoon showing of ‘Oceans’ before moving onto Kalk Bay for a collage workshop to provide a little inspiration.

With kids, it’s often hard to gauge how they’ve interpreted an experience and the collage provided an excellent medium for them to translate their feelings by building a wall of images and extracts taken from magazine cuttings and clippings. I was surprised to see that they had picked up on many of the more subtle messages put across in the movie relating to the environment, which in turn gave me hope that the messages of social awareness that we push through our projects will also stick over time.

During the coming week we will be heading over to Claire’s’ house where we will begin to paint.  We will also be holding several weekend surfing sessions in the run up to the auction pairing kids from our projects with local Cape Town volunteer surfers. News of these will appear here, getting involved is easy with sessions being help in the mornings at the ‘berg.

The Wavescape Auction will raise funds to allow us to purchase a fleet of new soft surf boards and wetsuits for the exclusive use of the kids in the project, proving the kids with something new to call their own.

Many thanks to Wavescape and to Claire for the first of many projects together. We hope to see you at the Auction on the 8^th, and on the beach before hand.