Indian Ocean Coast
I am woken at dawn by bastardised Australian and Swahili. ‘Wakey wakey hands off snakey,’ says Abo. ‘Comin’ out, malango?’ These are my surfing buddies: Daudi, Tony, James, Bumblebee, Mud Prawn. Surfing should be cool and fashionable. But our average age is 50. We look like vagrants. Abo has gout and walks with a loping crouch reminiscent of Early Man. Bumblebee crams a cannonball frame into a black and yellow rash vest with a bright-yellow bucket hat and is very dangerous when he catches a wave because he is unable to swerve or stop.
The waves are poor. This is neither Hawaii nor Bali. The local town pumps raw sewage into the bay where we surf. Only experience helps you balance swell charts against the times that municipality staff decide to void the tanks. The dilemma comes when this happens on a big spring tide day: should you surf and risk cholera, or stay safe on the sand, left to your thoughts of old age — such as, ‘How many seasons do I still have, how many swells?’
Despite all this I sense that everybody in our circle has personality disorders, some acquired, in my case possibly genetic, for which the only therapy is getting wet.
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