A clean break: surfing in Senegal

Despite world-class waves, the beaches around Dakar are still little known and uncrowded – the perfect spot for a surfing safari How do surfers say “wax” in Italian? “Wax” replies Marta Imarisio, the Turin-born cofounder of the Senegalese surfers’ hostel, Malika Surf Camp, as she rubs a bar of wax on to her boards, preparing them for the sparkling waves of Yoff beach on the outskirts of Dakar. “Rail to rail, nose to tail,” she says, covering the upper side of the board with the stuff, before striding back to her beachside lock-up to pull out more gear. “Wax” is also “wax” for surfers who speak Senegal’s official language – French – as well as for those who converse in the country’s many other local vernaculars. Yet this linguistic universality doesn’t make surf wax much easier to buy. While Dakar’s only boarders’ boutique, Tribal Surf Shop ( tribalsurfshop.net ), may intermittently stock surf wax, Marta and co tend to rely on friends abroad to send supplies on a regular, charitable basis, eking it out with a little thrift and elbow grease. The same goes for wetsuits, rash vests and leashes. Locally, equipment is hard to acquire and, when it is for sale, expensive even

Posted by on March 18, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.