Kenya
Our surfing gang — average age 50 — are out in the bay again, dodging sewage, bull sharks and even, earlier this season, a pirate’s corpse. The waves are terrible, that never improves. Yet our tight-knit gang persists in trying to stay fit enough to surf. There’s nothing else left to delay old age and give us our kicks. But this year Abo announced, ‘This’ll be my last season, boys.’ I stood there on the garbage-strewn beach with others — Mudprawn, Surfer Tony, James and Daudi, who works in the Guernsey financial services industry — and we shook our heads in disbelief.
Surfing is a matter of life and death for our group. Surfing is such an obsession that one of us was served divorce papers that listed among the spouse’s reasons for ending the marriage: ‘Surfing (NOT the Internet)’. If Abo retires, we thought, how long have we got left?
Growing up poor in Australia, Abo suffered a bone disease that should have put him in a wheelchair for life. Instead, he learnt to surf, which kept him nimble for decades. As a teenager he scrounged bottles for their deposits, bought a Volkswagen combi and hit the road. He lived off the bush with his rifle, and surfed until he was ultra-fit. After becoming an engineer, he migrated to Sudan, where he toiled for years, always finding time to trek to a bit of ocean with his board.
Today Abo suffers from gout, and his Neanderthal gait is worsening as the bone condition catches up at last. His real name is Kirk, as in Captain James Kirk from Star Trek, and his dream is to start a beach bar called The Starship Enterprise.
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