This is South Africa. Because South Africa is unspeakable, I need to remain in silence. But when I can no longer hold back the groundswell pulsing inside, I speak. Though I know my words pale in the light and darkness and contrast of the vagaries of Africa’s soul, I make a feeble attempt to convey what I know I cannot. Africa is ultimately unknowable. When I say I have figured her out, I know who she is, I have touched her complete depth, it is then that I elude myself while at the same time placing her in a box of my own construction, forged with the steel of the ego. Africa's soul is alive with mystery. It is only in touching her wild unknown, her own bleeding heart, that my own heart cracks open to who she is — and as a result, who I am.

South Africa is a journey, not a destination. It’s more than a surf trip. It’s about something greater than the waves at Supertubes. To truly enter into Mandela’s Rainbow Nation and its evolving story, forget all notions about what a surf trip should be. Here, it’s not about any certain break or even about the best wave of your life. Wait, I’m saying this in regards to the land of “The World’s Best Right Hand Pointbreak,” Jeffrey’s Bay? “That is sacrilege, cardinal sin, heretical,” I hear you say. Indeed it is. And so I repeat:

Don’t go to J-Bay.

Skip it. Drive right past the Surfer’s Mecca exit on the N2 highway. And keep on driving. Even if its four- to six-foot, offshore, and firing, with the postcard lines reeling from the top of Boneyards all the way through Supers and down to The Point. Two hands on the wheel. Pedal to the metal. Trust me. Besides, everyone from local pro Sean Holmes to holiday-making grandpas will be in the lineup, frothing to get behind the curtain one more time.

Surfing in South Africa isn’t what I once thought it was when I first visited in 2003. It’s not all about some of the best righthanders in the world, not even counting J-Bay and Bruce’s Beauties, or the Red Bull Big Wave Africa contest at Dungeons, or road trips deep into the heart of the West Coast with a summertime offshore berg blowing while the southwest swell ignites every empty reef in sight and you simply cannot choose which one to paddle out at, or the cyclones that dump swell into sultry Durban’s boardshorts-only beaches for weeks on end.

No, surfing in South Africa is not about that.

Enter a traditional mud hut, a rondavel, in the village of Mawotsheni, a few kilometers away from empty, peeling points and beaches, where cows and donkeys roam amid a thousand green hills. This is the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape, the poorest and least developed area of the country, where the HIV/AIDS prevalence tips 30%, and unemployment rates are over 75%. It’s a place of mystical beauty, a place that time forgot and development hasn’t touched.

As you enter that rondavel, the dampness of the summer rain permeates the still air. Complete darkness lays heavy over the inhabitants within. This is poverty's own dwelling, the rural poverty of the Republic of South Africa. Inside on the earth floor sits a family. But there are no parents or caregivers present. This is an all-too-common sight in this region: a family with a child as head of household. The faces of this poverty stare back at you, eyes revealing pain and raw vulnerability: Thobile, Lukholo, Ninty and Mbulelo. The brokenness of this place is unbearable, as it should be. Statistics about poverty suddenly become meaningless. Their faces are all too real. No adult caring for them. No means of income. No regular meals. No school. No security. No hope.

Until something happens.

They begin to enter the once-foreign sea at their doorstep. They are taught how to catch waves on foam longboards. Thobile, Lukholo, and Mbulelo take naturally to the water. A slice of their childhood is given back to them in the waves. As their skills mature, surfing gives direction and motivation, becoming the foundation for new goals. They begin competing in local and regional contests. They begin making life-giving choices based upon their desire to be healthy in mind, body, and spirit so that they can continue down the path toward the gifts from the sea.

Their broken lives begin to be put back together through the glide across the face a wave. Hope is born in their hearts. And sometimes, hope is enough. How did this happen? A few compassionate local people became aware of their desperate situation and took the boys under their wing, introduced them to surfing, offered them tutoring, got them enrolled in school, provided them with nutritious meals. People like Dawn, Dave, Belinda, and Charlie entered the boys’ lives and began showing them who they really were.

With surfing, nothing is ever the same. As a surfer knows, after one wave, you are never, ever the same again. Sometimes, in a poverty-stricken village in the Eastern Cape, a wave means the promise of a new life, where nothing is ever the same again. In South Africa, surfing isn’t about just surfing. It’s about hope and transformation and lives never, ever being the same. It’s about rebirth through the glide.

And sometimes, the glide is enough.

I recently founded a project called Surfcare as a means to bring together surfers, surf shops, and surf corporations in a collaborative movement to use surfing as a platform for catalyzing change. Beyond being a movement, Surfcare is a community development organization that uses surfing to empower youths dwelling in poverty in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. We are partnering with other local, community-based organizations in South Africa that are using surfing as a platform for transformation.

Surfcare hopes to create a wave of hope and a tide of change for the children of South Africa by addressing the root causes of poverty. We seek to empower the residents of coastal villages to transcend adversity through sustainable community development initiatives, including HIV/AIDS awareness and education, life skills training, and an orphan/vulnerable children empowerment project.

A wave is about more than a wave. The glide is about more than the glide. It’s about transformation and hope and new life. It’s about HIV/AIDS awareness, education, nutrition, development, relationship, gifts. And above all, Love.

Donations to Surfcare can be made on our partner organization’s website, www.ECTA-International.org — please click “Donate” at the top and scroll down to “Support Surfcare”

Ryan Kuja can be reached at ryankuja@ecta-international.org or 616-405-3771