Afrikisurf – A surf trip to West Africa

Took me a while to get back on track,  have had a low-grade Malaria-attack and pneumonia, so the first week was basically not very great. Once that was all over I was ready to surf again with Marc and the two Aussie guys Brad & Rob whom we had met in Freetown already. The group of surfers got smaller and bigger with people leaving and coming, eventually it was mostly Marc and myself with two spanish guys, Aitor & Miguel, sharing the waves with the locals and the Monrovia-Surfcrew.

Other than surfing we haven’t done much. I sold a few things but the van is still unsold, I’m trying hard by now and got ten people looking around for a potential buyer for it as well as posting it online. Since days I’m calling everyone i know, drive around the city forever. The problem is that prices went down a lot as the UN started to sell some of their vans, pick-ups and landies for very little money. That means you can get a decent car without mechanical problems for just a few thousand dollars. Not much luck for me so far..

Had a relaxing time though, was great to stay in the same place for some time, having our own room, a good shelter from the occasional heavy rain. Probably the most impressive thing in the last days is a poor chimp, living in a cage at a friends place. He somehow got it from someone and arranged everything to move it to a Chimpanzee Rehab in South Africa, paperwork and flight was all done. Shortly before the flight, the Rehab shut down, it didn’t work out and the poor chimp has to wait again. Anyway, beeing around him is amazing, it is the closest thing to human beeings for sure. You can shake hands, can see expressions on his face, he knows what you are doing and if you are feeling good or not. You can play with him and and he starts kind of laughing. The craziest thing is this: After his lunch there was food left on the bottom of the cage, lizards would come closer and try to get a piece of it so he chases them away. There was a few around when he wasn’t looking so I pointed at them, but looked at him. Immediately he looked where i pointed at and chased them away. I pointed in the tree, still looking in his eyes and not up in the tree, and he would look up there to see what’s there. No other animal would do that i guess! In Africa, Monkeys are either shot and eaten or kept as a pet. Some people would feed them cookies, give them beer and cigarettes and all kind of shit until they die, much younger than they normally would of course. It is sad to see that, and there’s nothing you can do about it as you cannot change everyone’s mind.