Surfs Up
· What do you get when you put two clumsy girls, and another who can’t swim into surf lessons? A hot mess. At our last day in Busua we decided to pay for surf lessons. Mama Theactrice is not a fan of swimming so her lesson consisted of posing with the board while we snapped some photos. She then took the role of watching after mine and Charli’s safety and also doubled as our personal photographer. During our “warm-up” we ran and did some stretches before we got our boards. At this point, if I recall correctly, both me and Charli had already tripped at least once each. Then began our lesson on the beach first to get the basics. Theactrice made sure to capture many photos of our confused faces and subpar surf stances. Once we were confident on land, well as close to confident as we could get, we headed to the water. This was not with grace, of course. Charli with her short arms could not hold the board and may have fallen a few times on the beach… don’t worry, Mama T was able to grab a few photos for evidence. Once I picked Charli back up onto her feet, we battled the angry waves and pulling tide. Our instructor told us to first begin to body board a few times to shore to get use to catching waves, then stand up later. After a couple mouthfuls of gross Ghana water, we passed the body boarding stage. It was time to stand. In my head I was saying “I got this, you can TOTALLY surf. You were meant for this”. When n reality, I believe I looked like a giraffe trying to stand for the first time, followed immediately by the look of a gasping goldfish upon tumbling into the water off of my board. It was a rough experience to say the least. After barely 15 minutes of struggle, me and Charli noticed that we no longer had our trainer by our side telling us pointers. Instead he gave up on us and headed for the beach. Despite our doubtful trainer, me and Charli chugged along at Theactrice got a good laugh watching and taking photos of us, safely on the beach. Although the lesson was supposed to last and hour and a half, we gave up the struggles after 45minutes of battling the waves. Even though we did not master surfing, we headed home knowing we tried our best and enjoyed every bit of it.