The sky is full of sand the
following morning; a dense
blanket of grit and dust that
stretches from the horizon to the
tip of the city behind us. The sand
comes from the arid interior of
North Africa, swept along by the
Harmattan. This desert trade wind
is said to be so dry that it can fell
trees as it sucks all the moisture out
the air, causing the sapped trunks to
snap like toothpicks. But the breeze
is cool against our backs, flaring
open the waves that break on the
shoreline with a steady percussion.
After spending the night in a
secure hotel compound, we had
hopped on a water taxi early that
morning. The boat sped along the
waterway, under a bridge where
traffic barrelled overhead, before
spitting us out into the broad
expanse of Lagos harbour. Cargo
ships stacked as high as buildings
dwarfed our tiny skiff while the
city loomed behind us like rows of
broken teeth.
“It’s all kinda apocalyptic,” said
Davis, as we motored past the rusting
hulls of shipwrecks and mangled
remains of an old oil pipeline that
was blown up by rebel militants.
Twenty minutes later we were on the
beach at Tarkwa Bay, amongst palm
trees and wooden fishing boats.
Unlike the right-hand wedge
inside the bay, the wave we came to
surf at Lighthouse beach sits on the
opposite side of the breakwall, which
receives the full brunt of swells that
have travelled the length of the
African coastline. But the waves need
the Harmattan winds to groom them
into shape, which only happens a
few months of the year.
“This wind blows all the way
from the Sahara,” says Micheletti
as he hurriedly waxes a fresh 6’0.
“Sometimes the dust is so thick you
can’t see the sun. It gets so bad that
planes can’t take off for days, or if
you’re in the city, you feel like you
can’t breathe.”
Out in the lineup we dodge the
walled-up sets, gauging the swell’s
intensity. Micheletti says there’s too
much period, claiming it’s better
when the swell is peakier. Despite
this, he manages to find a handful
of open tubes in rapid succession,
employing a textbook pig-dog
technique. It takes Aliotti and Davis
a while to find their bearings, but
soon they are picking off the gems in
amongst the closeouts.
“It kinda looks like Indo, huh?”
says Davis, after scratching into a
double-up drainer that slingshots
him through the tube.
“I always say, why go to Indo
when you’ve got this?” Micheletti
jokes in reply. “Not because the
waves are like Indo, but if you catch
enough of them, it eventually adds
up to one perfect Indo wave!”
Now 33, Micheletti learnt to surf
inside the bay when he was eight
years old. Before that, the only
person surfing in Lagos was Wale Da
Silva, a Swiss-Nigerian artist. “He was
the first real local at Tarkwa and used
to let us play with his boards in the
shorebreak,” says Micheletti. “That
was more than 20 years ago.”
Despite the few expats who
surfed Tarkwa on and off over the
years, Micheletti would mostly find
himself alone in the lineup. When
we first visited in 2011, there was
barely a handful of local surfers from
the village. But a few days later when
we go for a paddle inside the bay,
the wedge is thronging with a legion
of kids riding all manner of craft –
half pieces of surfboard, self-shaped
handplanes, dilapidated boogie
boards, even a wooden crate.
Every time a set approaches,
the nose of a busted thruster flies
through the air. We eventually figure
out the surfer responsible does this
to avoid the broken board being
ripped out his hands whenever he is
caught inside. On a wayward toss the
nose lands inches away from another
grom who gives the perpetrator a
slap, then scornfully lobs the broken
piece of foam out to sea.
The kids without boards sit on
the rocks, goading their friends
into closeouts, throwing stones
half-heartedly to pass the time. But
whenever someone gets a good one,
the rocks erupt in a chorus of cheers
and whistles.
The chaos is reaching fever pitch
when a tall, powerfully built surfer
paddles out. Within minutes the
lineup self-corrects and an unspoken
pecking order kicks in, taking its cue
from the towering figure.
Godpower Tamarakuro
Pekipuma is one of Tarkwa’s first
generation surfers. Like Micheletti,
he too was enthralled when he saw
a couple of expats riding waves
outside his village.
“At first I thought they were
Jesus Christ!” he says. “You know
that story where Jesus walks on
the water? I wanted to walk on
water, too.”
Soon after, Pekipuma fashioned
himself a board made from stolen
wood. “My mother is a fisherwoman,
so she used to have wood from theWilliam Aliotti nearly didn’t make this trip. His
French embassy was not going to stamp his
passport to Nigeria. Too dangerous they said,
not unless you’re conducting business, they
said. William shrugged and convinced them it
was a work trip. Here’s Will doing work.