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.
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