Liberia’s First Professional Surfer? 0
As the UK Pro Surfing Tour begins this week, our writer reports on one country’s alternative approach to the summer’s most thrilling sport
Alfred Lomax gently lays his 6ft 3in surfboard down on the pristine sand of Robertsport and runs us through some basics. “This here,” he says pointing out to the waves surging down the beach, “we call this Camp Point. Then, up the beach, is Cutting Point — that’s where they break both ways. The next point is Loco and the one after that is Shipwreck. It’s not far. Let’s go. OK?”
For the next few hours Lomax and his five-strong crew, the Black Surfer Boys, show us the best spots in Robertsport. Lomax is the most experienced surfer here — he taught the others after teaching himself — but all use their battered hand-me-down boards to attack the waves with equal joy, shouting their approval over the thunderous roar of the waves when one of them catches a particularly good break.
Today the waves aren’t that great: up to only 5ft or so, but Lomax says: “The waves here get fine, playful. When they are high, March to October, they can be 20ft high and you get good barrels, sliding waves. You can ride one wave for a long, long time.”
In most surfing communities, from Sydney to Santa Barbara via Kuta and Cornwall, the best spots are jealously protected by the locals. And with reason: beaches there are often thronged with neoprene-clad waveriders — so much so that you have to queue for waves. In Robertsport, though, crowds are not the problem. Lomax and his crew (James, Philips, Samuel, Benjamin and Augustin) are the only regulars here. They are, as far as The Times could ascertain during our visit, the only surfers along this entire nation’s 359 miles (579km) of wave-rich coastline — apart from a few aid workers. That’s because this nation is Liberia, notorious for its horrendous recent history of blood-diamonds, child soldiers, rape, murder and war.
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Robertsport, Liberia. Alfred Lomax, who became Liberia’s first surfer after finding a bodyboard while fleeing from rebels.
The civil wars of Charles Taylor, the former warlord and President of Liberia, which left more than 200,000 people dead, ended only four years ago and there are more than 15,000 UN peacekeepers and police officers stationed here. It was the war that led Lomax, now 20, to surfing — and the war that might yet still lead him to a life unimaginable to most Liberians.
In February 2003 Taylor was still in control of Monrovia when Lurd, a fighting force determined to oust him, took control of Robertsport. Residents were abducted, children armed and women taken as “wives”. Lomax and a group of 28 others decided to strike out for the relative safety of Monrovia, approximately 60 miles down the coast. “They were recruiting. I knew I didn’t want to be a rebel so I walked for two and half days to Monrovia, swimming across the rivers and climbing the rocks along the beach.”
Once near Monrovia, by then under attack from Lurd, the Robertsport refugees stayed hidden in the bush — except for daily looting trips to the port. “The first day I went and got food, and rice on the second. Then one day I went back and I saw a bodyboard. Everyone else was taking food, but I took that. I held it in my hand.” Lomax didn’t know what the board was called (“I called it a floater”) but, thanks to a Scottish aid worker named Magnus, he did know what it was for. Before Lurd’s arrival, Magnus had occasionally surfed in Robertsport — observed by Lomax. “I used to watch. I used to dream that I could do it.”
That August, the war ended and Lomax returned to Robertsport. After school and his work with the local fishermen, Lomax would paddle out on his looted bodyboard, the only rider on Robertsport’s spectacular waves. Then one day in 2005, a Californian named Nicholai Lidow turned up: he had heard there were waves in Robertsport, and had brought along his board. Lidow was astonished to see a Liberian out on the waves with him. He befriended Lomax, gave him his surfboard and promised to return.
When Lidow did come back, a year later, Lomax was a proper surfer: he had worked out how to stand on the board. Lidow had brought a group of professional surfers with him and a camera crew who shot a film called Sliding Liberia (before he heard the word “surfing” Lomax called his hobby sliding). The film, a socially-aware surfing safari, has been well received among surfers and showcases Robertsport’s waves — as well as Lomax’s story. You can see some impressive highlights online (tinyurl.com/surfliberia ). Now, thanks in part to the film, a few surfers are beginning to brave Liberia’s reputation as a lawless, violent nation to check out Robertsport: Lomax says that he has ridden alongside Australians, Greeks, Brazilians and Italians since the film’s release. Others are catching on to the potential of Robertsport and Lomax. Behind us, on the hill above the beach, is Nana’s Lodge — a cluster of luxury Russian-made safari tents opened last year by a South African investor and Musa Shannon, a retired footballer. Nana’s is popular among aid workers and other expats, who drive their white 4x4s down from their security compounds in Monrovia at weekends to drink beer, swim and party.
On the Friday we arrive it is empty apart from some teachers from the American School, here for a girl’s trip, and a mournful Finnish paediatric nurse, brooding about her return to Helsinki after nine months with Médecins sans Frontières. But the next afternoon, as we prepare to leave, Nana’s is fully booked. Shannon’s father, Dr Eugene Shannon, is now Liberia’s Minister for Lands, Mines and Energy. His family are members of Liberia’s elite: well-off and joint US/Liberian citizens. Prior to their flight from Liberia in 1990, the Shannons would holiday in Robertsport. As a footballer, Shannon’s career highlights include 11 caps for Liberia and 20 goals for Tampa Bay Mutiny in the US. Today, wearing a Livingston FC shirt, Shannon says of Lomax and his friends: “I want to see how good these boys can be. Surfing is not a sport that has exploded on the African scene yet: everybody wants to be a footballer. Alfred and the boys are pioneers.”
His mentorship, he acknowledges, is not entirely disinterested. Lomax’s story is helping to bring in customers. Eventually Shannon and his partner plan to open a hotel, and believe that game-fishing, as well as surfing, could bring more visitors to Robertsport. Lomax, though, needs any help he can to gain the opportunity he so desperately wants: to surf for a living. For now he feeds himself, his girlfriend Jere, and their two-year-old son, Nicholai, with handouts from Shannon and the few dollars he earns as a fisherman, alongside the men and women who live in the village next to Nana’s Lodge. It is a labour-intensive process: Lomax and four others paddle a dug-out canoe to lay a net in a great, 100m arc through the waves from one side of the beach to another. Then, the net laid, the men of the village slowly draw in their catch. It isn’t huge.
Liberia was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves, and its motto is a stirring one: “The love of liberty brought us here.” The truth of is more complicated. Those settlers were encouraged to venture back to Africa by a group called the American Colonisation Society — which was at least partly supported by Americans who found the idea of freed slaves in the US an unsavoury notion. When they arrived, those colonisers discovered that their African Utopia was already inhabited. In a letter from 1835, partly printed that year in The Times, a settler from Norfolk, Virginia, reported: “We had to go to war with the natives of this country . . . Our cause was such a just one that the Almighty enabled us to conquer and to burn their towns down.”
Today, the descendants of those settlers still dominate Liberian society. Justice here has long been an extremely flexible concept.
Yet peace is taking hold in Liberia under the Government of Ellen Sirleaf, Africa’s first female elected head of state, and Robertsport is equipped with all the natural attributes of an adventurous tourist’s paradise. It is flanked by jungle (we saw colobus monkeys, both living and for sale as meat), wetlands (now a nature reserve) and the 100sq km Lake Piso, that is fed by rivers in which highquality diamonds have reportedly been discovered.
Shannon and his partners have plans to see that potential through. Lomax, though, does not want to hang around. “There are no more high waves for me here in Robertsport, I can surf them all,” he says as we walk back to Nana’s from Shipwreck point. “I’d like to see waves in Hawaii, Australia, South Africa or California. I don’t really see black people surfing, most of them are white guys. I’m dreaming that surfing can help me see the world.”
Thanks in part to help from Shannon, Lomax has been granted a passport since our trip to Robertsport.
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