From: Where in the World is Farhana?

Before I embarked on this trip, I was given a special quilt, made by a special lady named Dionne, of the Wahine Project.  The Wahine Project is an organization that teaches resource poor girls how to surf.  Based out of Monterey, California, they also teach girls how they can respond locally to global issues.
 
When I met Dionne, I thought to myself, ‘Wow!  Someone who has more ideas than me!’  Dionne is a petite woman, with bright eyes and a passionate resonance that just mesmerizes you when you meet her.  She’s the kind of woman who thinks of something and then bam, 24 hours later, she’s managed to manifest it.  She’s just that way. 
 
The quilt came to Dionne one night when she was having trouble sleeping, and was trying to figure out a cool art project to do with the surfer girls in the Phillipines.  She ended up tying two colorful sarongs together.  She then had each girl paint their handprints on it.  The handprints moved together to form the crest of a wave.  It was supposed to be just a simple art project.  But it ended up becoming so much more.

Dionne had no idea that this quilt was in for quite a journey.  In the years that followed, it crossed the border making its way to Puta Mita, Mexico.  Here girls with few resources learned to surf from the Wahine project and then painted their prints on the tapestry.

Then, it somehow landed in the hands of surfer girls in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip via our friend Matt Olsen of Explore Corps.  Here they are painting their handprints on it.

A few days before I left, Dionne met with me and gave me the quilt.  I felt like I was receiving the holy grail of girls’ surfing.  Since I did not get my India visa, I ended up handing it off to Ted, our director of photography just as he was on his way to the airport to catch his flight to India.  Ted then delivered it to Cara who then delivered it to Ishita, India’s first female surfer.  6 degrees of separation!
 
Here’s Ishita and another surfer girl in India, making their mark on the quilt!

I posted the picture on Facebook, like I have always been doing with our trip updates.  Dionne happened to see it.  The next thing I knew I was tagged in a video and a slew of comments started showing up in the Facebook activity feed. The site of the image overwhelmed Dionne so much that she ended up making an on the spot video of her reaction.  I thought I’d share it with you, as it was a really super touching part of this trip. 

Then my friend Sara, who is one of the big brains behind the Blue Marble movement, a global movement to raise consciousness about protecting our ocean,  wrote something in the comment section of the post, that I think pretty much summed the whole thing up for me.  She said:

"Dionne - so sweet and lovely to see you so moved. It's so brave to show love, and to share moments of gratitude that come from a place of pain as well...pain for the difficulties the planet has, yet joy when we open the apature of seeing what is true. Farhana Huq and the entire expedition into Brown Girl Surf is profound social justice/planet justice work...and you made visible what many of us feel inside: happiness and pain, gratitude and passion. Thank you."

The quilt then met me in Bangladesh.  We had the girls put their hand print on it the first day we went surfing together.  When we explained to them what it was, they looked amazed that something had traveled so far and wide and touched so many girls who, despite their nationality, religion, race, and color, had something in common with them – they were lovers of the sea.

As I stood alongside as we made hand prints on the cloth in a combination of red and green (fitting for the holiday season), one of the first things I felt was ‘geez I’m tall!’  I also felt this inexplicable sense of responsibility to ensure somehow these girls were all linked.  How cool would it be if they could all meet one another one day!

I never thought in a million years I’d go to Bangladesh as an adult to surf with girls there, and then hand paint a quilt with them on the beach.  But here I was, smack dab in Cox’s Bazar, on another crazy adventure, doing just that.    I wondered where this would all go, and also where else this quilt would travel to.  I wondered what more I’d learn about the girls, their stories and their challenges.
 
Each time I look at the quilt, I’m reminded that sometimes really profound things are just profoundly simple.  Who would have thought a piece of material could start to connect and bring together these unique (and remote!) communities around the world.  Many don’t have Facebook or internet for that matter, so this might be the closest thing to them knowing there are other girls out there around the world, who share their passion and dreams.       
 


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