BUREH
BEACH, Sierra Leone — There is at least one place in this country,
along a quiet, palm-fringedcove, where nobody is talking about viral
loads or death rates, treatment centers or protective suits.
Instead, the focus is more elemental and more peaceful: on the rhythm of the waves, the pull of the ocean, the sets coming in.
Every weekend, despite the fact that this country is in the throes of an Ebola
epidemic, or maybe even because of it, a dozen or so die-hard local
surfers paddle out into the blue-green swell, floating on their boards
like water bugs.
“How you doing, K. K.?” one surfer yelled across the water to another on a recent morning.
“I fine!” K. K. yelled back. Her smile was enormous. “I just caught a big wave.”
Ebola is still gnawing through Sierra Leone, the worst-hit country in the world. Hundreds of people are infected each week, and the official death
toll is closing in on 3,000. Bulldozers keep knocking down trees,
smoothing out more land for more graveyards. Little vans with tinted
windows prowl the country roads, ominous fixtures on the horizon, “RIP”
painted on their hoods.
But as death goes on, life goes on, each as stubborn as the other.
Every
morning, thousands of people march in from the thick green hills
ringing Freetown, the capital, to take their places at their desks, or
in their sheet metal kiosks, or along the main roads, where so much of
the economy — from mangoes and stacks of trousers to plastic pipes and
buckets of gravel — trades hands.
Plucky
entrepreneurs are turning tragedy into art, and commerce, by making
low-budget Ebola movies that sell for $2 a DVD. Roasting chickens twirl
away in the windows of Lebanese restaurants, where people gather for
lunch and a flick through the papers for the latest round of bad news.
Hoteliers say business has plummeted, but they keep up a positive front.
“Morning, brudda. Morning, sista,” the clerks belt out each new day.
But
on the outskirts of Freetown, along a perfect crescent of golden sand
where little wooden shacks stare out at the sea and the palms hang heavy
with fuzzy coconuts, the Bureh Beach Surf Club
gives new meaning to the word resilience. No one here is bowing to the
virus. Instead, the surfers seem determined to live out their passion as
a way to cope.
The
club was just getting going when Ebola hit. The idea behind the club,
founded in 2012 by poor fishermen and run like a cooperative, was to
enhance ecotourism, protect Sierra Leone’s pristine coastline and create
some jobs. Bureh Beach is the only surf club in the country, and the 30
or so surfers in it eke out a living by renting out boards and cooking
up beachside meals for tourists, who used to arrive in scores. These
days, they mostly see the lone aid worker or a few others swept in to
work on Ebola.
The sign at the beach’s entrance, scratched on an old surfboard, says it all: “Di Waves Dem Go Mak U Feel Fine.”
Jahbez
Benga, a slab of muscle who used to be a journeyman fisherman until he
stood up on a surfboard for the first time and never looked back, said
surfing was like therapy, especially during times like these
“When
you’re inside the water,” he explained, “you shouldn’t be thinking
about anything, not Ebola, not nothing, just the waves.”
The
Bureh surfers do a Zen-like job of blocking everything out as they
carve up the lips of ocean rollers and cruise in the foam. But all
around their little cove, others, even the ones who have been lucky
enough to survive Ebola, are struggling to put their lives back
together.
George
Bangalie, who lives about an hour away, barely remembers his descent
into sickness. He was dizzy, then delirious, then rushed into an Ebola
clinic. All he can recall now are the moans of patients, the faceless
doctors and the blur of nurses and cleaners and body men peering down
over him, covered head to toe in yellow plastic suits.
“It was like I seeing a different world,” he said.
Mr. Bangalie has recovered from Ebola and is now back in his old world, a slum.
“I feel better,” he said. “But I really need a job.”
For
many Ebola patients, exercise was an important piece of their recovery.
Maybe it was simply psychological, but many survivors said they built
back their strength by jogging laps around the clinics and doing
push-ups on the ward’s concrete floors, at their doctors’ encouragement.
That
vigor seems to be part of Sierra Leone’s national ethos, especially
now, when so many people are fixated on staying healthy. Freetown’s
streets thicken at dawn with men and women decked out in the latest and
brightest spandex — jogging, stretching, jumping rope, or doing situps
and push-ups in the grass.
On
Sunday mornings, some streets and roundabouts are so packed with
fitness buffs that it looks as if a triathlon is about to start. It is
not unusual to turn a corner and find a grown man enthusiastically doing
jumping jacks, by himself, in the middle of the road.
At Bureh Beach, everyone looks in amazing shape. The surfers are lean and strong, with wasp
waists, broad shoulders and six packs. Not one of their lot has gotten
sick. At the beach entrance is a checkpoint staffed by a surfer with an
infrared thermometer to scan all visitors and make sure it stays that
way.
The
club consists of a small warren of shacks, some for sleeping, some for
cooking. A dozen or so surfboards lean against a bleached wooden rack.
Mr. Benga is the head coach — he charges $12 for a lesson. He eyed a
visitor carefully.
“First time?” he said.
“Yep,” the visitor replied.
“This’ll do,” he said, grabbing a seven-foot board.
The
two trudged across the soft, wet sand and plunged into the waves. The
water could not have been cooler than 80 degrees. The swells came in, a
clean three-foot-high beach break.
In
the distance, overlooking the cove, stood a half-finished hotel, yet
another casualty of the virus. Bureh Beach was set to hold its first
international surfing tournament last fall, expected to attract 1,500
tourists and create 500 jobs. Ebola canceled it.
After
a few wobbly slip-offs, the visitor caught a wave. There is nothing
like the thrill of the shh, shh, shh of the edge of the board knifing
through the water, kicking up a fine line of white spray, powered by
nature.
“He’s up! He’s up!” Mr. Benga yelled.
Afterward,
a sumptuous feast appeared from the beachside shacks: barbecued crab,
freshly caught fish, hand-sliced French fries and mounds of spiced rice.
Mr.
Benga beamed with pride as he presented the meal on old, cracked
plates. Then he grabbed his board and waded back into the surf. He was
not thinking about the canceled tournament, the deserted hotel or the
wounds of his country.
At that moment, it was all about “di” waves.
