Brown Girl Surf Elite Waterborne Crew at Coastal Clean up Day!
 
Brown Girl Surf kicked off the fall by showing our love for the ocean on California Coastal Cleanup day on September 16.  We joined in Oakland’s Creek to Bay day as an “elite waterborne cleanup crew” on the Oakland estuary.   Our intrepid team, ages 11 to sixty-something, zipped around in kayaks, snatching the forgotten and hard-to-find pieces of trash from under docks, around pilings, and on hard-to-access shorelines.  A big shout out to our friends at the California Canoe and Kayak Company who supplied us with our trusty kayaks, and our partners, the City of Oakland Parks and Recreation and Public Works department who sponsored and supported our efforts.
 
We ended up collecting over 42 gallons of trash, mostly plastic and styrofoam. That’s a LOT of trash that we prevented from polluting the ocean, tangling up wildlife, and ending up in the bellies of sea creatures.  Go Brown Girl Surf elite waterborne cleanup crew!  We also learned, via a great presentation by Wanda Redic from the public works department about the sources of street pollution.  Did you know that you actually CAN take your own reusable cup/plate/container to a café or take-out joint.  The California Health Code allows servers to place food in your reusable container as long as they change out the spoon they use to serve you afterwards.  Help spread the word!

Visit from our Brazilian Surf Sister Erica Prado!
 
In late September, Brown Girl Surf had the pleasure of hosting our surf sister and friend, Erica Prado, all the way from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
 
When Erica is not shredding it up on her surfboard (she was a pro surfer as a teenager!) she’s raising the profile of women in action sports as a TV journalist and producer on Brazil’s, “Canal Woohoo!”  Oh, and did I mention she also had her own TV show, focusing on women surfers and skaters, and her own adventures as a TV journalist and surfer.
 
Highlights of her trip included a Brown Girl Surf early morning outing to Bolinas, replete with perfect sunshine, visiting seals, mists over the water,  a 5:1 female to male ratio, and mini waves that you could ride all the way to the beach.   We had a super lunch with Equator coffee friends and a dinner with the Brown Girl Surf extended family at Easy Creole in Oakland, as well as a rad outing to the Cal Academy of Sciences for an ocean-themed Night Life (whales bones, sea otters, and 3d kelp forests!)
 
My favorite part of my time with Erica was bringing her to the kick off session of our Surf Sister Fall Crew as a guest instructor.  It was so beautiful for our girls to meet an accomplished female surfer from another country, who was a role model in so many ways – from the care and attention she gave each of them in the water, to her impressive career as a journalist, to the grace and humor with which she bridged our language barriers.   Over picnic lunch on the beach, the girls got to ask her questions about life in Brazil, her adventures as a teenage pro surfer, and her work as a TV reporter.
 
Thank you Erica for visiting us, for trading your Brazilian bikini for a 5 millimeter wetsuit, and for demonstrating how powerful it is to make connections across cultures and countries.  Thanks to our whole Brown Girl Surf family for welcoming her with open arms and showing up in such a big way.  I think Erica’s visit brought all of us here in the Bay area closer together too, and reminded us of the importance of getting out to the water together as much as we can, even on a school day.

OK, so people want to know more about what brown girl surf has been up to.  You’ll notice we haven’t blogged much this year.  It is not at all related to the fact that we haven’t been up to anything.  Quite the contrary – we are up to some pretty cool stuff over here in the Bay Area. 

First off, thanks to all of you who saw our short doc on Ishita Malaviya and contacted us about it.  We were so stoked it broke 2.4 M views.  Really, we never anticipated this.  We just co-produced it with the awesome team at Storytellers for Good who traveled to India to film it and who put it up on vimeo.  We did some local screenings at a few film festivals, and went on with our daily lives.  So to see it go viral was CRAY.  Like CRAY CRAY.  Regardless, we believe in Ishita’s message and quite frankly, I never had a role model like that growing up, and if other girls now can, especially girls of color, man, we’ve made some change!  So that is really cool.

So, for starters, there is a back story to all of our doc, which you might find very interesting (see below).  We screened it at Patagonia in 2013 and this was recorded from that session.  Behind every cool story is of course, another story!

The backstory to Surfing Possibility: The Surfer Girls of India.  Filmed at Patagonia in San Francisco in 2013.

Recognizing the importance of doing social change work in our own backyard, I partnered with a truly awesome soul, Mira Manickam, who came onto brown girl surf to help take it to the next level.  She’s my co-leader in crime and when she is not surfing, she is creating outdoor youth empowerment programs, writing surf-inspired rap music and competing in American Ninja Warrior (I kid you not).  We’re both surfers and Ninjas (I was a member of the U.S. National Karate team growing up), and we both have South Asian roots AND we both like to rap, so even though we’re really opposite in some ways,  it was like a little twist of fate we met.  Hee Ya!

So Mira has been designing and spearheading all of brown girl surf’s local initiatives.  Here is what we have been up to as of late: 

1.     Surf Sister Teen Camp:  We partnered locally with the Oakland Parks and Recreation program and outreached to adolescent girls to introduce the sport of surfing to them.  Surf Sister Teen Camp targeted girls on the local Oakland city swim teams because they are they most likely surfers.  And our theory of social change rests on the fact that we’ll build competent surfers in disadvantaged communities who then will be the conduit to building paths for others in their communities to go surfing.  So in essence we won’t have to exist.  Ya dig?

2.     Hosting Brazil’s most prominent black female surfer:  From September 20-27, we will host awesome Brazilian surfer and reporter Erica Prado, probably the most prominent black female surfer in Brazil, and star of her own TV show.  She is a beautiful soul, and this is her first trip to California.  Mira met her while filming a series of surf hip hop videos down the coast of brazil.  Check out Mira's video here:

3.     Our Bangladesh Surfer Girls Project is still going and our last scholarship funds went over in January of this year to support the education of 3 young girls who were former factory workers.  Unfortunately surfing is no longer part of our program – it’s a long, long story and you can read our blogs about Bangladesh to find out more.  But, scholarships are still being administered and Hazera Khanam, our brown girl surf Bangladesh Ambassador, continues to empower disadvantaged women and girls in her own work as a female activist.  The important thing is that girls are now in school and not in factories. 

Well, hopefully that should catch folks up!  We have some other SUPER cool initiatives in the works that we’ll write about later.   Our Facebook page is seriously the best place to follow us but we’ll try to be more consistent with the blog posts too.  And OMG, so many of you signed up for our newsletter, so you probably were linked to this blog via our newsletter.  Welcome!

Thanks so much for following our journeys.  

Aloha, Namaste & Salaam,

Farhana, on behalf of Brown Girl Surf

P.S. - We also just got a new fiscal sponsor with The Social Good Fund in San Francisco.  This means that you can actually make a tax deductible donation to us!  If you are inspired by our work and wish to support our programs and efforts, we welcome your partnership and support!  Thank you! 

(Note to reader: this post was written in mid December, before the sublime new year surf days of 2014.  Since writing this, I have had to let quite a few “orange days” go unsurfed.)

Monday Dec 16.  I wake up in Oakland, my new home 20 miles from the beach, and I check the surf report.   8 to 12 feet at Ocean Beach (OB).  Great god!  I guess I won’t be surfing today.  The past couple months I’ve been getting my groove on at OB, paddling out in head high conditions on the regular, and feeling a whole new confidence dropping into one or 2 foot overhead waves when it’s breaking clean and smooth.  But a 12 foot wave is something I do not want to encounter in the water.  And when the Surfline commentary mentions in small print, “occasional 15 foot sets” – then you can guarantee that I will be safely planted on shore. 

But today it’s more complicated, because next to “8 to 12 feet” is an orange bar.   The surf report represents the overall conditions through a color coded bar, and today it is orange, which has been nearly unheard of for most of the Fall.  If the overall surf conditions are poor to fair, which they usually are – the bar is blue.  If they’re fair to good –the bar is green.  And if they’re very good, which pretty much never happens in the cold windy waters of San Francisco – it is orange, and you should call in sick to work and go surfing because it could be months before another day like this occurs. 

An orange day simply cannot go unsurfed.  But what about when it’s 8 to 12 feet?  You see my dilemma.  There’s no way I am going to plunge my mortal body into 15 foot steam rollers at Ocean Beach.  But I’ve got to surf.  Perhaps there are other places that are breaking at a more reasonable size.  A quick search on Surfline yields little hope – 15 feet at tender-hearted Bolinas (how does that work??) and 16 feet at Cronkite.  Pacifica is smaller but looks closed out.  What to do?

Today I was planning to surf with Reece, my boyfriend.  I should be clear that I am not a person who normally surfs with a boyfriend.  Actually I am not a person who normally has a boyfriend.  More the free bird type, sailing solo along the winds of life.  This applies to surfing too – I love surfing with friends, but will just as often go by myself – and make new buddies in the water. 

But right now, I have a boyfriend, and it’s awesome.  He’s awesome.  AND he’s a surfer, which makes it even better.  AND he’s been surfing way longer than me, which means he knows a lot of places I don’t.   So on a day when I am not ready to face occasional 15 foot sets at OB, Reece has some ideas for where we might find waves of a more genteel variety.  We hop in the car, cross the Bay Bridge, and begin our quest. 

We wind our way through the untouchable mansions of the sea cliff neighborhood to snag a parking spot at China Beach and check out Eagle’s and Deadman’s – two breaks that only work on a REALLY big northwest swell.   We find a little spot huddling on the sidewalk next to a chain link fence and, and peering under the Monterey pine right out to the water.   Deadman’s as Reece predicted was crazy crowded, with a mob scene lining up to catch the occasional set.  Neither of us like dealing with big crowds, and were hoping to hit up  Eagles, a smaller break closer to shore.  But Eagle’s had nothing.  The water was barely waist high and the biggest sets were yielding only unsurfable crumbles.

I mentioned a spot on Baker’s Beach that I’d tried surfing once before during a big swell.  So we drove further up the rode and pulled over in the BB parking lot.  We peered across the sand dunes to the little spot in the corner, where a clean left sometimes breaks right in front of a big rock – but nothing was happening there either.

Getting desparate as the sun got lower, I suggested Fort Point.  How about it?  Both of us were reluctant since we’d heard of the locals being pretty surly there. As Reece pointed out, anywhere you’ve got a crowd massing up for a small take off point, it’s dicey business. But we’d driven over all the way from Oakland with hopes of surfing – it was our best bet.  We pulled in by the bridge, the wrong parking lot for a lookout, so I balanced precariously on a fence post to get a clear scope on the break.  Fort Point was as we predicted super crowded and not breaking too tremendously well.  It didn’t seem worth it.  At this point, our hopes of surfing were sinking with the sun.  We didn’t have time to get to any surf spots that might be more forgiving than Ocean Beach, where the unbridled force of the Pacific Ocean smashes directly into the land, unhindered by any intervening geographic features.  Reece, who could surf OB’s 12 foot waves today if he wanted to, kindly, suggested one last spot that might be more to my abilities, the area in front of Sutro baths.  OK, we headed back there and watched for a while as really big sets refracted oddly into this section of beach not known as a popular surf spot – breaking in lots of different places.  I wasn’t feeling it.

Ugggh…. It looked like surfing was not going to happen today for me.  We’d run out of options, and the only remaining spot we hadn’t checked out was OB itself, but there was no way in hell I was getting into the water there with 15 foot sets coming in.  But Reece might.  I knew he was itching to surf, and could handle the big waves better than I could.  So with about an hour of daylight left, I told him he should make the call for where we went next.  He could surf and I would watch.  No shame in that on double overhead days.  And besides, it would be a joy to watch Reece surf, I’ve never just sat and done that before. 

OK – Let’s try OB, he says and see how big it is.  SO we drive down to Kelley’s Cove.  To my surprise, it’s actually not as scarey-looking as I thought it would be.  I can see in the distance the occasional 15 foot giant sets rolling in down the beach around Judah and Lawton.  They remind me of stampedes of wild horses, rearing up and charging towards the shore, with the offshore breezes flinging back wild manes of spray.  But it’s a bit smaller here in the slightly more protected waters of Kelley’s.  Reece is stoked to see that it’s not too crazy, and is already hopping out of the car to put on his wet suit.  And now I am thinking twice about whether I am gonna watch, like I said, or try it as well.  The sets are big, definitely bigger than anything I’ve ever paddled out in.  But I’ve been getting out in big surf recently, maybe this is the next step.  Of course, I feel a little terrified.  But jeezus, we have been driving for 2 hours looking at waves.  Sometimes the desire to surf trumps the fear of what’s out there. 

OK, I’m gonna do it.  So I hurry behind Reece and put on my wetsuit. 

We run down to the beach.  Everything feels fast right now.  The waves coming in.  The setting sun.  The need to surf.  Reece goes in first because he doesn’t believe in stretching.  I tell him I’ll meet him out there, do a couple shoulder rolls, zip down my hood, and start heading out. 

The paddle out looks scarey.  I can see big sets coming down on Reece’s head as he fights through the white water.  Maybe this is one of those stupid ideas I sometimes get.  I’m walking out through the white water – it’s low tide so I can walk out a good bit, carrying on my internal dialogue as I go.  What good is it going to do me to be in the water terrified.  I’ve played that game a lot and learned that sometimes there really are days when you shouldn’t go out.  Yes, exactly.  This is probably one of those days.   I can’t even imagine getting out past the breakers.  And just as I have convinced myself that I should throw in the towel and go back to shore  - there’s a lull in the sets.  I am not far from the break now, because it is shallow and I have walked out so far.  If I paddle out now, I can probably make it without too much trouble.    But I have to go RIGHT NOW.  Fuck it.  SO I paddle like hell out to the ocean.  And what do you know, I make to the outside set with hardly a glitch. 

OK Cool.  But now I am out here.  And here come the sets again.  The waves are weird, and the swell is refracting from different directions, sometimes doubling up and fading out, but sometimes combining in weird ways to make unexpected bowls and take off spots.  Bigger waves are threatening me from a variety of different directions, and I am just trying to hold my shit together to navigate all of this.  Deep breaths.  You’re fine Mira.  You’re fine….  Actually I am terrified.  Reece on the other hand is happy as an otter, not paying attention to me at all as he gleefully catches enormous scary wave after enormous scary wave.  So here I am, yoga breathing like crazy, trying to suss out which among these strange mix of close-outs, double ups, might offer me a rideable shoulder.   My yoga breathing though -- amazingly -- is working, and it’s keeping me calm.  When a nice one comes right towards me, I am cool headed,  I go for it with100% commitment, and I make it – WHOAH this is a big drop, and I am flailing a little as I hurtle down probably the biggest wave I’ve caught yet.  But Oh it feels fun.  The joy ends quickly though when I turn up out over the lip of it just in time for a huge set to pound the crap out of me.  I don’t even have time to get enough purchase on my board to duckdive, so I just get churned.  I hate this feeling.  As I come up, gulping down air seeing the next wall of white water rushing towards me, I decide, you know what Mira- you did good kid.  You went out, you caught a wave.  Now just go in and be grateful.   So I let the wall of white water push me towards the shore.  And in a couple seconds, my feet can touch the ground.  Oh the blessed ground.  And I’m getting ready to walk the rest of the way to shore, but I am also a little surprised.   It’s really unexpectedly shallow right here at the edge of where everything is breaking. It’s strange, but the walls of white water not very far from me feel less scarey as I look at them with my feet on the ground.    And I realize that with the conditions that day, I can pretty much walk almost all the way to the break – through all the big churny onslaughts of waves.   Well that’s not so bad.  Come on, Mira, this isn’t as bad as you thought.  Get back on the pony kid.  And so I go back out. 

Paddle paddle, duck dive, paddle paddle, duck dive.  And repeat.  But I make it out just fine and commence again my yoga breathing tactics.  At some point I realize I have been without fear for far too long.  In the course of escaping double overhead sets, I’d ended up really far out in a place where no waves were breaking.  I realize my error (cowardice?), and start making my way in, riding on unbrokem wave crests as they pass through.  OK, now I am in the spot where things are happening.   Reece just caught a sweet wave.  Some other dude just caught a sweet wave.  I need only continue to pay attention, be brave, and I’ll catch one too.  I better do it soon, because we only have about 10 more minutes of daylight.  Just as I am having this thought, there it comes looming on the horizon – the megatron set – there’s nothing for it, I am too far in, I won’t get over it, I try to paddle and duck dive, but I take a wave on the head, and it churns me all around.  And right behind it is another one.  And I think one more.  At this point, the sun is going down.  I am freezing and feeling pummeled.  I think I really am going to have to ride this white water in.  The ocean’s beaten me today. 

I stagger my way up the beach to the car, and Reece is right behind me.  It’s too dark to surf anymore.  I don’t want to kill Reece’s stoke, but as we are changing into our dry clothes I tell him that I feel a bit like a loser.  He says,  don’t feel like a loser.  You did great.  You caught that big wave.  But I am thinking, yeah, you caught like 15 big waves, smiling and carefree the whole time, while I was just trying not to  hyperventilate.  Why aren’t I better at this? 

We talk about other things and laugh and joke while we get back into the car.  Loser or not, you can’t help feeling stoked after coming out of the ocean on a day like that – adrenaline is adrenaline, endorphins are endorphins.  I need to get back to Oakland so Reece drops me off at the BART.  This is the first time I will ever take my board on the train and I am excited.  I grin at Reece as we kiss goodbye.  I am gonna get some funny looks on the BART tonight with this board I say.  Reece laughs.  Tell them it was double overhead, he shouts to me as he drives away. 

As I walk to the BART, I get a chance to think on it for a second.  In the crowded rush hour traffic of market street I feel a world away from the wildness of a pounding violet ocean and a deep red sunset.  And also blessed – like I have just touched something sacred and am carrying it with me secretly, magically, in the salt that is still on my skin and hair.   Today it was 8 to12 feet at ocean beach and I paddled out. I caught a big wave.  And I paddled back out.

I do get lots of  funny looks on the BART.  And I sit next to a nice woman who asks me all about surfing.  And I tell her how it is the best feeling in the world.  And she has no idea what it means when I say it was double overhead.  But it doesn’t really matter.    I’m still holding the magic in the salt in my hair, and the stoke is pinging off me.  As she’s smiling more in her post work day commute, I am pretty sure she feels it too.

Submitted by Mira Manickam, Surfer Grrrls

We are so looking forward to presenting Surfing

Howdy!  We're back with a profile interview (it has been a long time) of a surf trailblazer.  I got involved with Congo activist work years ago after hearing a program during Congo Week on the radio about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the deadliest conflict since WWII.  It's a vast, beautiful country with a huge natural rainforest and mineral rich terrain.  Unfortunately, it is in a serious crisis due to outside greed over control of its wealth (that's a longer blog post). 

With all the tragic news I read about Congo, and with the only images coming out of the country  to be of vulnerable people suffering, I wondered about something more positive and light about the country - namely, if there was surfing in Congo.  I looked online and of course found some waves in Congo. And of course I couldn't help but wonder who was actually surfing in Congo - just outsiders or native Congolese?   I had asked my friend and fellow activist Kambale Musavuli of Friends of Congo if he knew of any female surfers there.  Well, a few months ago he e-mails me and says he thinks he met the first Congolese female surfer, Gisele Eboma, only she lives in New York.  Whether she's one of the first is unknown but as far as I know, she's the only Congolese woman I've ever met who surfs.  She's also a dancer and has a creative eye for fashion.  So I followed up with her and we put together this Q&A. 

Check out her interview below.  Given her background in dance and the arts, it's no wonder she was attracted to the sport of surfing, the love that binds us all.   Happy reading!

Q: Where are you from ?

A: My name is Gisele Eboma, I was born in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where as a child I experienced a diverse range of popular and traditional dances.  I moved to New York City and began dancing at Alvin Ailey Extension focusing on Modern Dance, Afro-Cuban dance, Contemporary and West African. I was soon performing with OYU ORO Afro Cuban Experimental Dance Ensemble.

Q: How did you get into Surfing? 

A few years ago, I surfed the waves for the first time in Virginia Beach. I met a pro surfer named Caleb from San Diego. He took me for a ride in the ocean and taught me how to surf. I didn't have my swimming suit with me so I surfed with clothes on. It was so much fun. When we got back to the shore, we all celebrated and cheered to "Gisele's first wave". Caleb works with a foundation called "Surfers Healing."  They take kids with autism surfing in the ocean. To see them with big smiles on their faces is the most beautiful scene ever.  I never felt so alive. All my life I dreamed of surfing waves in the ocean. When little, I remembered drawing in class, a girl with wild hair standing on a surfing board. I wonder how I made good grades. My mind was always somewhere in the ocean, mountains, and forest.

Q: Tell us what inspired you to start Surfing Queen.

A:  When I went to  surf for the first time in Virginia Beach, I fell in love with the sport and the surfing culture. As a dancer, I wanted to bring surf and dance together. This is how Surfing Queen was born. "As a dancer and performer, I’m always looking to grow and continue to move.  Surfing brings something real and deep, the audience can strongly feel and relate to it. Surfers live at the edge and they learn to be comfortable there. I’m very much attracted to that lifestyle. Surfing brings back the little girl in me, the playful one who is always looking to explore and to be ready for the next challenge".   

Q: What's unique about Surfing Queen?

A: Located in New York, Surfing Queen offers a range of stylish surfing clothes and accessories. Surfing Queen gives you a unique sense of African fashion.

Q: What has been your biggest achievement so far with Surfing Queen?

A: Meeting talented and creative individuals. I have also been blessed to show and sell some of my merchandize. My highlight has to be, me appearing in the youtube Surfing Queen video photo shoot done by talented Mr. Hollis King.

Q: What is your biggest challenge ?

A: Sponsorship and serious hard capital that will permit me to have a large workplace that will increase the productivity and  feeling of my designs.

Q: Where can people find Surfing Queen gear ?

A: At this present moment, I'm talking to some creative and professional people to come up with a beautiful website for Surfing Queen. People can contact me on Surfing Queen's Facebook page and see the products  https//www.facebook.com/surfwiththequeen

Q: What's next for Surfing Queen?

A: I'm going to design women's bathing suits, wet suits and jewelry.  Then from there, I will be working on the men's line called Surfing King.

Surfing Queen will not only bring the surf and dance community together but will improve the lives of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo where they are victims of an ongoing war by partnership with non-profit organization like Friends of the Congo. Customers will support this vision by purchasing Surfing Queen products.

Q: What advice would you give to other women regarding creating something from their passion?

A: Follow your passion and your dream, get out of your comfort zone. Sometimes you have to do what's best for you and your life, not what's best for everyone else.  Money can be an obstacle, but you can't give up. There is always a way, like business grants, investments, loans... You got to have faith in your products and service. For me God is my foundation where my strength and inspiration come from. Take risks as well. Here is a quote from HelloBeleiver.com   "Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being positive about what could  go right."

Take from "Where in the World is Farhana?"
 
I hope your summer is going fantastic!  The last you heard from me, Bangladesh had broken me (in a metaphorical sense).  But within that experience, something very positive emerged.  Our friend, translator and social entrepreneur, Hazera, became so inspired by our trip that she ended up creating an initiative to educate and improve the livelihoods of girls in the community as part of her Coconut Club Business. 
 
When I last wrote you, she was busy renting out space and organizing the girls.  We received detailed budgets and program plans from her that she spent a great deal of time formulating.  Meanwhile, we were trying to figure out a way to generate some funds to send over to her.  And then came the silence. 
 
I had an eerie feeling something was up as it was not like Hazera to go off the grid. I was scratching my head wondering what happened.  After weeks, she finally emerged only to reveal a slew of immense challenges she had been facing to get the project up and running.  

I came to learn that Hazera began her work, but the dominant male surf clubs of the region paralyzed all development efforts, including going so far as to keep the girls from attending Hazera’s program.  (And that’s not even the half of it).  I didn’t feel surprised at the resistance, but felt shocked at the extent to which some people would try to thwart Hazera’s efforts.  The project seemed to threaten the dominant male surf culture.   I also felt a little guilty that she was so far away having to go through the fire, so to speak, on her own.  There was little we could do from here except to listen and show our support.

Luckily, Hazera didn’t seem too deterred and vowed to continue her work.  After re-grouping, she suggested a different strategy: providing an educational scholarship program (primary & high school, college & university) and sports training to girls.  The program is designed to affect poor (orphan) girls, girls selected from women headed households, disabled girls or are girls who have severe (financial) difficulties to continue their studies, irrespective of race, religion, ideology or politics.  Although it's a charitable approach, it's just the beginning.  A more sustainable development program is the long-term goal.  
 
As Hazera points out, “Cox’s Bazar has the longest sandy sea beach in the world and is fast becoming a new destination for international surfers looking for adventure and a ‘different surf experience’. However, this region is one of the poorest and most neglected areas of Bangladesh, with the highest illiteracy rate. “ So the program operation would attempt to reach girls in several slums, and Cox’s Bazar beach.
 
All beneficiaries would be “first learners”, girls growing up in a hostile environment where almost all their family members and neighbors are illiterate. Most of them have to fight injustice, traditional beliefs, discrimination and prejudice to secure their right to study, let alone use their body in a sport.
 
I’m thrilled at the new direction, and even more thrilled people are showing up to support this unique education surfing girls initiative in a place where girls are most vulnerable.  Hazera will launch this project as a Brown Girl Surf Social Entrepreneur in Residence.  We'll support her to start with coaching, funds and resources. 
 
I had put together a small campaign to sell the remaining card decks we made from our trip as a way to raise a bit of funds to help fund Hazera’s endeavors and our storytelling.   Check them out – they are pretty cool!  Half of our proceeds will be sent to support educational scholarships for girls.

We have raised some funds and will be sending it over to Hazera in the coming weeks.  If you’d like to be a part of this, you can purchase some decks here.
 
When you’re in the business of activism on behalf of women and girls, it’s not uncommon for things to start and to get pushed out of the way. It just means you have to get more creative with the work.  What’s most interesting for me is how in contrast the story of surfing in India is to Bangladesh, where India’s female surfer is not only an independent business owner of her own surf school, but lives happily near the beach and doubles as a Roxy model in her spare time.  (Just a little compare and contrast for you).  She is also a journalism major so has all the tools and platforms at her disposal to craft and tell her own story to the world. 
 
On another note, we finally got confirmation that Patagonia in San Francisco will be screening our 2 short films from Surfing Possibility on October 8th , just in time for International Day of the Girl.  Though I’m excited to screen the short films, in all honesty, only a slice of the story (from Bangladesh at least) can really be captured.  The real story lives in these writings I’m sharing with you.  For this reason, we will be including an additional round table discussion to update you on the other meta-stories to this entire journey. 
 
It’s hard to know what conclusions to make regarding Surfing Possibility and the impact surfing is having on the girls in Bangladesh.  But undoubtedly the story of how it started there is fascinating.  It began with just one person surfing, and then was built up with the help of Western Evangelicals with an agenda to convert.  Amongst the various agendas, girls were somehow included.  Yet based on my experience, it seems through it all, the girls, more than anything, are positioned as a way to market the self-interest of other male surfers and surf clubs.  Our girl friendly initiative focuses on developing and empowering girls and in our model is led by a local woman leader.  My hope is that one day girls will not be treated as possessions, but as strong, educated, women with strong, local role models to look up to.
 
On another note, I also launched a new business - Surf Life Coaching.  A few months ago, I was seriously wondering how in the world Brown Girl Surf, coaching, my leadership experience all fit into one another.  After many months of reflection and work, Surf Life Coaching is what surfaced and I’m excited to share it with you. Through Surf Life Coaching, I'm using the philosophy and techniques of walking, surfing and applied neuroscience to help guide people's mind, spirit and body towards a business and life they love.  www.SurfLifecoaching.com

After starting a non-profit and now working on brown girl surf, I have to say launching a business feels 100 times easier.  I’m learning that sometimes the rise of something new, be it in business or in the social sector, always awakens something deep in others – something that feels threatening, or that causes people to feel a loss of control – whether it be control of people, ideas, or money.  That, as a new business owner, I’m learning is certainly a common thread I see emerge in both worlds. 
 
Anyways, that’s all the news from this part of the world.  I intend to stay put for a few months at least, spending time doing Surf Life Immersions with leaders and individuals on the Northern California coast, planning a Surf Life Retreat in Costa Rica next year, and continuing to work with Hazera on next steps with our initiative. 
 
As always, I invite you to be part of our Brown Girl Surf community.  We’d honor and welcome your ideas and support.  
 
In the meantime, please save the date for our Patagonia screening on October 8th from 6-9 pm in San Francisco.

Stay tuned!  Coming soon!!!

From: Where in the World is Farhana?

It has been 3 months since coming back from the Surfing Possibility trip. I had meant to send out some type of picture perfect ending message from that trip, but I didn't because I had a severe case of writer's block.  In truth, I had no idea how to share with you the meta-story to my trip – my most cherished gold and black pearl necklace that went missing out of my bag, the struggle we felt watching the surfer girls embody freedom in the water, only to become objects of male control once on land, the lies that were told to us, the name calling, the upper respiratory illness, the food poisoning.  Yes, for all the great blogs I wrote about our adventures, I couldn’t help but feel a bit broken down from Bangladesh upon my return. I landed at SFO and rolled myself into my friend’s car after 6 hours of food poisoning where I became one with Emirates' toilet.  It felt like a journey that required much physical and mental recuperation. 
 
As I was recovering from my food poisoning–come-illness (which took a good month to contain), I wracked my mind about ways to lighten the story of the heavy reality of the girls’ lives.  It was a reality that revealed itself to us in various ways.  I also tried to reconcile our “possibility” narrative that framed this awesome trip against some of these realities. In fact, I spent most of January trying to make sense of it all.  What impact did we make from taking this trip?  What was true about the interviews we captured?  Who really showed up because they were truly a surfer?  Who of the girls showed up because the "boss" knew it would be good PR for business? In this web of confusion that was also a reality of our trip, I couldn’t help but feel a little duped. 
 
I began to reflect back on the hours of conversations we had with our translator and with my Co-Producer, Cara Jones of Storytellers For Good.  We discussed for hours the economic situation of the girls, and the sheer vulnerability they faced with no strong nuclear families.  At one point in our journey, we were all ready to launch a full-blown surf retreat in order to employ the girls so they could have a sustainable wage.  That idea lasted a few days until I thought to myself “How am I going to do that?”  We barely raised money for my ticket to come here and I was in the middle of launching my coaching practice.  Cara was in the middle of making a full-length documentary and also ran a business full-time.   When would we have time to invest in a third venture?

I was delighted when Hazera, our faithful translator, sat down with us one day, passion and zeal oozing from her 5’0 petite Bengali body.  She began to reveal her vision for how this could all work.  “I want to take this on,” she told us.  We were thrilled because she is such a capable, smart, entrepreneur and better yet, she was born and raised in Cox's Bazar.  By “this”, she meant the eco-surfing camp and reality tour idea we had been playing with.  It was as if we got to witness that ah-ha moment of the social entrepreneur – the one that seizes them into a fit of inspiration so strong that propels them forward into obsessively living their life purpose. 
 
And I thought to myself, how could I NOT be a part of this?  My role now?  To be her coach, of course! ;)  And I too started to see a way forward and how this collaboration of sorts would work.  I’d coach this social entrepreneur pro-bono for 6 months and she’d drive forward her idea so together impact could be made. We began our sessions in late December in Cox's Bazar and continued via Skype from there.
 
When I returned from my trip, I noticed something interesting in one of the Facebook albums of the Bangladeshi surfer dudes.  It was a picture of Nasima on a surf trip in her surfing catsuit (the one her husband had thrown a fit over).  Given the struggle I witnessed while I was there between her husband and the suit, I was pretty stunned to see this pic and wondered what had changed.

The next thing I know, I receive an e-mail from Hazera informing me that Nasima, the 15-year old aspiring pro surfer girl, was divorcing her husband. 

As if that wasn’t enough news, after 3 coaching calls, I woke up to find this link www.coconutclubbangladesh.wordpress.com posted on my Facebook page from Hazera – a fully developed Wordpress website, with the vision for this surf camp retreat strategically woven into Hazera’s social business named ‘The Coconut Club’.  I teared up upon seeing it.  At that moment, I had a shower of insight too.  This was the work of the new social entrepreneur – to actually be in the field, collaborating, inspiring, coaching, and exploring possibilities and not behind a desk running database queries  and asking people for money – to really be IN IT.  Brown Girl Surf seemed like such a crazy, indulgent idea when I first started it.  And now I was beginning to see the exploration leading to something I never imagined possible.

Nasima’s divorce has since been finalized.  The last I heard she was getting papers ready so she could get a passport. In a recent Skype coaching call with Hazera, she went on and on about her idea to start a surf shop, and her vision of traveling to the west to talk about her project and to share the gem of Cox Bazar with the world.  She more recently rented office space so she could start English classes for the surfer girls ,who ironically were some of the most brave and risk taking females we met on our trip – most apparent when they were in the water. Hazera’s plans to access their bravery, freedom and risk taking perspective in the water and bring this to their learnings on the land is the critical insight of this venture.  She has very fittingly names this venture ‘The Surfing Girls Education Project.’  (I am attaching the executive summary, just in case some of you are interested). 

And how cool that shortly after launching, she attended a weekend long event in a think tank with Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammed Yunus where she discussed her plans for her social venture:

And so, that’s how it all panned out….Barely a month had passed since leaving Cox's Bazar when I started to get reports of these changes.  I thought I’d be telling you all about the sad ending and the hopelessness of the situation of girls actually being free and empowered to live in their possibility.  Instead, it took an unexpected turn (as all good stories sometimes do), and I’m able to leave you, my dear readers, with a story that is truly about the possibility that results from human connection.

Brown Girl Surf has certainly taught me innumerable lessons from this trip.  Mainly, you never really know what is going to happen, and so you just have to start and feel your way forward sometimes (this is true I think in early stage entrepreneurship in general).  How fortunate were we to have met Hazera and how fortunate we had an empowerment through surfing agenda which Hazera knew how to work with right away.  She is galvanizing the girls and the surf community behind this vision, at a time in Bangladeshi history where all the beach front land has been leased out for 99 years to Bangladeshi companies, most of them illegally, for so called "development."    Her role in empowering the surfer girls of Bangladesh means so much in this era of globalization.

This is not only a story of surfing possibility, but of the possibility for change to be made at the ground level, by the leaders and people of the community, faced with the imminent tsunami of global capitalism hungrily eyeing this peaceful beachside town.  If anything, the seeds have been planted and a link has been made for some of the surfer girls and boys of Bangladesh to have a stake in the economic development of their country via tourism.  Perhaps there’s a new vision here for a surf tourism industry that’s unlike Bali, Indonesia or Sayulita, Mexico, where it is carefully crafted, owned and led by its locals, including its women. 
 
And if Nasima ends up living her dream, and doing what she wants to do, helping to shed some light onto her story is so worth it.  All it takes is one person to set off the spark to inspire others of what’s possible.  In fact, her story is so important that our dear friend and talented film maker, Heather Kessinger, has been on a mission to create a full length documentary of Nasima’s story for the past year and a half (her team is about halfway through production).  The name of the documentary is ‘The Most Fearless, an Unexpected Surf Story’.   Brown Girl Surf will be partnering with Heather to ensure that all of these stories get out into the world and can seed a tangible impact for some of the world’s most vulnerable girls.
 
For those of you who are local, please mark your calendar for May 9th in San Francisco (venue to be announced)– we’ll be debuting our Surfing Possibility Profiles: Stories of India and Bangladesh’s Surfer Girls.  I’d love to see you all there for some fun mingling, inspiring stories, drinking, chips and dip!
 
I am not sure where I’ll be off to next. But hope to see you soon, in some far off land!  Oh, and I almost forgot!  Guess who just took their first surf lesson?

Happy Spring!  Hope you have a healthy supply of Zyrtec close at hand.

Signing off from Hilo, Hawaii (where I’m house sitting for some friends for the month…no, Hawaii doesn’t count as a far off land but there are lots of coconuts here).
 
With love,

Farhana

P.S. - Show your support and purchase a Brown Girl Surf T-shirt!   (Logo designed by C.E.O. Women graduate Wen-Fei Hsu)

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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