Surf – and SUP – for a better future
So it was with this idea in mind that I started to try to get in touch with some of the few surfers of Angola – Facebook performed miracles in this quest – and after a few days I got to know Telmo and Sergio, two Brazilians who moved to Angola for work and in their spare time started to travel the country in search for perfect waves. On their journey they got to know the conditions in which many kids from coastal community live, not having much future nor having any contact with the maritime tradition that their ancestors had.
Telmo and Sergio arrived from Brazil to live and work in Luanda. During the weekends they used to travel far and wide to explore the huge potential the Angolan coast for surfing. During these trips they got in contact with various communities living near the coast and in Cabo Ledo, right in front of one of the best lefts in the world, they met a particularly isolated and troubled community. They fell in love with the place and they decided to return to Cabo Ledo every weekend starting to spread the seeds surfing in the village. A few months later they eventually ended up opening the first surf school of Angola, named after the Angolan goddess of the sea, Kionda. I discovered that what seemed like a regular surf school lost in the middle of the Angolan coast was actually a way to help the local community to develop their social and economic condition. Every weekend Sergio and Telmo left the chaos of Luanda to drive down to Cabo Ledo, bringing food, books and surf gear to a small pack of kids and teenagers who eventually started to form the first generation of Angolan surfers. What Sergio and Telmo were trying to do was to give to these kids an alternative way to look at the future by including surfing into their lives. Now those kids who started surfing in Cabo Ledo together with those two Brazilian are all between 15 and 20 years old and they all work on weekends at the beach giving surf lessons for expatriates who visit the beach for camping during their spare time. Alongside this, Sergio and his girlfriend committed to providing to a group of local kids between 5 and 12 years old a weekly education program that includes surfing, but that goes far beyond it. For these children this is a school of life, it is a chance to get out of the narrow social context and to learn new things and new skills that will be useful in their lives.
