Two of the boys from Surf Haiti dodge share a wave, May 5, 2014.
It occurred to me on a seemingly calm, lightly cross-shore day that there was something very similar about the people I was surfing with. It wasn’t just the fact that for the past nine months I have really only been surfing with this select group, nor was it the board sizes and shapes that abounded the turquoise blue water lapping around our waists. It was what brought us all together that we had in common. Having paddled a mere 500m from the dusty causeway, leaving the moving trucks and cars to morph into Hotwheels versions of themselves, it dawned. All but one of our motley crew was an expatriate – and even he was half Australian. All of us have come to Kiribati for foreign aid endeavors, and all of us surfed. This isn’t to say that the reason I chose Kiribati was so that I could attempt to get shacked before work, more so, the job itself. But there was definitely an alluring pull to the atolls for their untapped surfing potential, where it truly is hard to take an eye away from either the lagoon or reef. The ocean surrounds us entirely. What is foreign aid’s relationship to surfing?
Many would lambast the foreign aid industry for its inefficiencies, massive consultant fees (which I am yet to discover), and poorly managed structural adjustment polices that riddled through Africa and many other countries of the global south. I choose to sit on the fence on this issue, agreeing on some level and disagreeing to another. When you venture a long way to do good deeds for a developing economy – this said subjectively – you tend to bond with the other expatriates amongst you. If you are lucky enough to be by the coast then you keep fingers crossed that perhaps a surfing community will bob up from somewhere beyond the reef and ensure your weekends aren’t all spent trying to dodge conservative alcohol laws. There isn’t much writing regarding the bonds formed when working within this industry, however one article I did stumble across was ‘Surfing in the Time of Ebola’, published on Wavelength earlier this year. A story of exploration, drama and of course, an epidemic that spread through some of the poorest countries on earth. There are celebrations of the experiences shared by the journeyman and it is a pure example of the joy that can be found.
There are also unfortunate examples where the foreign aid industry can push up the prices of accommodation through plain presence. Haiti following the 2010 earthquake is one example. This makes the potential for surfing tourism minimal, as Port-au-Prince swells full of development agencies, access is mainly reserved for those living in-country. Surf Haiti is one such organization that is pushing the initiative towards the younger generations of Haitians. This is something that we look forward to being strident about in Kiribati with the Kiribati Surfing Association (KSA), as the waters fill with those born upon their lands, the appreciation for environmental health will surely increase.
Walu International is another example of the interweaving between foreign aid and surfing, we can also not forget SurfAid and all the incredible work that they push through Indonesia. The blend of foreign aid and surfing is perhaps a more well trodden path than many would realize and this extends to the influence the expatriates have on the local communities. When they leave their boards behind and watch the glee on kids’ faces who have never felt the power of the ocean rushing amongst their ankles. Whatever the relationship when exploring a foreign land for surfing opportunities, we can always come back to the notion that promoting sustainable tourism in an impoverished setting can provide enormous benefits when linked with forms of international development.
