In A Time Before Memory
To celebrate the Mami Wata x Billabong “In A Time Before Memory” collaboration, which celebrates surfing’s West African origin story, both brands wanted to make a gesture in support of original, indigenous African surfing communities. Since we shot the launch campaign in Senegal it made sense to honour and support this West African surfing community in Dakar, so we linked up with Marta Imarisio and Aziz Kane from Surf Kids Shredding Senegal and asked them how we can help.
Surf Kids Shredding Senegal (SKSS) is a social surf project in Dakar, Senegal, that uses surfing as a tool for youth empowerment, personal development, and social change. SKSS has a strong focus on supporting women’s surfing in Senegal, where girls and women are often excluded due to traditional roles and patriarchal tendencies. SKSS addresses this by offering a girl’s surf program, but also after-school educational support and in so doing, freeing the girls up to hit the waves.
When we asked Marta what she needed most, she explained that SKSS and the associated Malika Surf Camp, that she runs with her husband Aziz is based in Yoff, a coastal suburb of Dakar where the waves are good but often blown out, depending on the time of year. What was needed to improve the level of the girls in their program was exposure to the Almadies Peninsula’s other world class waves such as Ngor, Ouakam and Secrets... and in order to do so, they needed a vehicle dedicated to just getting the girls to the waves and back. Mami Wata and Billabong stepped in and donated the required funds for a new-ish bright green van aka The Senegal Surf Bus.
To land the opportunity more deeply, Senegalese women’s surfing pioneers Aita Diop and Degeune Thioune, who both came up through SKSS and work there as coaches and facilitators, are busy learning to drive and getting their driving licenses, so they can safely transport the girls to the breaks and coach them in quality surf - further establishing themselves as women surfer role models in the community and both training and inspiring the next generation of Senegal’s women surfers.
