The Future Of Senegalese Surfing Runs On Four Wheels

Senegal is an African surf oddity hiding in plain sight.

Nearly half its population lives within a short drive of 530 kilometres of coastline and proper waves — points, reefs, beach breaks. As far as set-ups go, the westernmost country in continental Africa ticks all the boxes.

Every lump of northwest swell that sneaks past the Cape Verde archipelago heads straight for the Cap Vert peninsula where Dakar, the capital, sits.

For decades, travelers have flown in to find empty waves further south and east. But anyone who’s paddled out at Ngor, Ouakam, Yoff, or a not-so-secret secret spot knows Dakar is a proper, yet underrated, surf city.

Recently, Mami Wata and Billabong joined forces to celebrate African surf culture with their In A Time Before Memory collaboration. After using the place, its people, and its waves as subject matter, it only made sense that the gesture of giving back should land at the swell-smacked peninsula where the campaign was originally filmed.

Surf Kids Shredding Senegal — or SKSS, which reads like the sound a rail might make in the water — is an innovative West African surf initiative founded by Italian-born Marta Imarisio and her Senegalese husband, Aziz Kane.

SKSS works with kids in Yoff, using surfing as a way to build confidence, community, and their future beyond the shoreline. SKSS has become a crucial space for girls’ surfing in Senegal, a country where the cultural currents don’t always encourage women to paddle out. Besides flat spells, traditional roles and patriarchal expectations can discourage females from surfing. Marta and Aziz run after-school programs and tutoring sessions so the girls can surf without sacrificing their education, their future, or responsibilities. 

When Marta was asked what she needed most for the project to endure, her answer was purely logistical. Yoff has waves, but they’re seasonal, fickle, and wind-sensitive. What the girls needed was consistent access to the Almadies Peninsula’s premier waves such as Ngor, Ouakam, Secrets, etc. in order to keep progressing. But without a way to reliably get there, these waves might as well have been planets away.

Mami Wata and Billabong matched a straightforward request to an equally straightforward solution: a bright neon-green van. Dedicated to safely getting the girls to the beach and back, it was dubbed the Senegal Surf Bus. 

Two pioneers of Senegalese women’s surfing who came up through SKSS, Aita Diop and Degeune Thioune, are currently learning to drive so they can take the wheel themselves — because no non-surfing driver has the wit or patience to endure multiple spot checks before finally heading back to the first.

They’re coaching the younger generation and will soon be guiding them through the Almadies, maybe even passing on the weight and responsibility of handling the aux cord.

The idling of the neon-green van outside might become music to the ears of the future of West African surfing. A modest contribution that might open doors, widen horizons, and change quite a few lives forever. 

Just keep wax off the seats, thanks.