By Nicholai Lidow

“Donne-moi ton passeport.”
The soldier grabbed my passport and looked it over.
“Americain?”
I nodded.
“What are you doing here, don’t you know there’s a war going on?”…
* * *
It wasn’t the waves that brought me to West Africa; it was the war. I came as a volunteer for a local organization, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, in order to research the peace process in Côte d’Ivoire. Once the most stable country in Africa, Côte d’Ivoire collapsed into civil war in September 2002, a result of government-sanctioned discrimination and the violence in neighboring Liberia. When France sent 4,000 soldiers into the country to stop the fighting, the world breathed a sigh of relief. African countries usually suffer in silence, but Côte d’Ivoire, thanks to its valuable cocoa and coffee plantations, was lucky enough to receive the benefit of international attention. The war appeared to be over, but peace had not yet arrived. The country was in limbo.
* * *
My first time at the beach in Ghana it was gray, but the waves were good. I watched the sun rise from a small fishing village—clapboard shacks on the sand, the smell of fish and sewage in the air. Brightly painted canoes pushed their way through the head-high peaks, a daily ritual of fishing and survival. As I paddled out and started catching waves, more and more people gathered on the beach until it seemed as if the entire village had turned out to watch.
The power of the waves surprised me; I expected to find only small, mushy surf in West Africa. The flat sandbars formed the waves into fast walls and I had to race down the line to make it to the channel; I only turned to avoid the dugout canoes that the fisherman rowed through the surf zone. Eventually I got used to the speed and I was able to throw in a few snaps and floaters along the way.
The crowd cheered and laughed at every wave, but it was the wipeouts that really made them go wild. When I got out of the water dozens of laughing children surrounded me, all clamoring to get my attention and touch my surfboard. The older men of the village were more reserved, but were too curious to stay out of the crowd.
One of them pointed and asked me, “What is that?”
“It’s a surfboard,” I replied, “I was surfing.”
He had never heard of it.
* * *
The sound of the rain was punctuated by a knocking on the front door. I woke up from a fitful sleep in the tropical heat and stumbled my way into the living room to answer it. My roommates—four Liberian refugees now living in Ghana—were already up. Out of the rain stepped three young women, dressed like American teenagers in hip-hop inspired fashion, urban chic. They spoke quickly in Liberian pidgin and I struggled to understand their conversation. Slowly the story unfolded: the women left Liberia earlier that day after rebels stormed their home. The gunmen stole everything they could carry and then violated the women with the muzzles of their AK-47’s—the rebels’ version of a cavity search for hidden valuables. The gunmen were about to shoot everyone in the house when fighting in the street outside drew their attention elsewhere. The women managed to escape to the airport and somehow made it to our house—they had nowhere else to go.
* * *
As I drove East, I knew it was a mistake; the waves kept getting smaller. I crossed into Togo, a narrow sliver of a country that borders Ghana. Posters of President Eyadema covered every wall, and billboards proclaiming his greatness lined every street. Elections had been held two weeks ago, and Eyadema successfully rigged them yet again—he is currently one of the world’s longest standing dictators.
Discouraged by the lack of swell, I found my way to the hut of a voodoo priest. Voodoo is the most common religion in Togo and is practiced by more people than both Christianity and Islam combined. In the hut, a shaft of sunlight pierced through the suffocating darkness and illuminated the face of the idol—a large mud head adorned with cowry shells and animal skulls. I introduced myself, but the priest made no reply. He began to convulse and shake and soon a dozen cowry shells erupted from his hands and scattered across the floor. I could feel the empty eyes of the idol watching me.
The priest began to speak, but silenced me when I tried to respond; he was talking to the idol. Eventually the priest handed me a series of small objects and explained that they would protect me on my journey. I thanked him and got up to leave, but he stopped me.
“Ça fait 30,000 francs,” he said, “You must pay me fifty dollars.”
“C’est trop cher,” I replied, “That’s way too much. Can’t you give me a discount?”
The priest thought about it for a minute and then told me that he had to consult the idol on issues of money. He spoke to the mud deity and soon turned back to me: “The idol says you can give me 25,000 francs, but no less.”
My bargaining skills were no match to those of the idol, so I paid the priest and left.
The entire coastline of Togo is nothing more than a string of Shell oil refineries placed side-by-side; the scenery leaves something to be desired. I passed a string of beaches, but none of them had any waves. Crossing into Benin, I passed a jungle-covered point located in front of a giant freshwater lagoon. A miniature right peeled off the sandy point and a tiny barrel chewed and spit its way down the sandbar for fifty meters. A perfect knee-high wave, just waiting for the right swell…
* * *
The bus slowed to a halt in central Côte d’Ivoire and two soldiers with guns came on board. “Descendez!” They shouted, eyeing the seated passengers.
We all got up and slowly made our way to the door. Yesterday this would have been frightening, but by now it was routine. I had been on this bus for more than thirty hours, and this roadblock was only one of many. These stops usually weren’t too much trouble for me. As one man explained, “The soldiers are afraid to mess with Americans. They think there is a satellite up there watching you. Who knows? Maybe there is.”
I stepped off the bus and wove my way through the metal spikes and felled trees that were guarded by soldiers that looked too young to be in this line of work.
A soldier walked towards me and eyed me up and down.
“Donne-moi ton passeport”…
After two days on a bus I finally reached my destination, a Liberian refugee camp named “Peace Town.” Located in an area known as the “Wild West,” the refugee camp is one day’s walk from the fighting in Liberia and is situated directly on the frontline of the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire. Calling it “Peace Town” is a bit optimistic.
I was traveling with Malayee, one of the refugees I lived with in Ghana. He had family in the camp and they immediately offered us a place to stay. Their hospitality and generosity was amazing; very soon their mud hut felt like home. Walking through the camp, I was followed everywhere by laughing children. One of them kicked a soccer ball in my direction and a small girl walked up shyly to hold my hand. The camp seemed like an oasis of peace in a vast wasteland of violence.
The next day I began to talk to some of the refugees about their experiences in the war and the living conditions in the refugee camp. A crowd of people quickly formed around me; everyone wanted the chance to tell their story. At the edge of the crowd a man waved, trying to get my attention. After talking to a few other people I finally made my way over to him.
“Not here, come inside. I can’t talk here.”
He was insistent that we not talk where others could hear us, so I followed him into the private darkness of his hut. There he told his story.
“When the war came, the soldiers…they forced us to fight…”
The man explained how the government soldiers of Côte d’Ivoire had come into the camp and forced hundreds of Liberian refugees to join their forces. Having fled the violence in their own country, the refugees were now forced to fight in someone else’s war. I heard this story repeated over and over by other people in the camp. Finally one family said they had something to show me. They led me through the forest surrounding the camp and stopped in front of a large mound of red dirt.
“What is this?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.
“This is where the bodies are buried.”
The mass graves were less than three months old, and the only evidence of the refugees’ plight. After forcing the refugees to fight, the soldiers of Côte d’Ivoire buried the victims in the forest in order to escape detection by the outside world. The refugees continue to live in fear, trapped between two wars. The oasis of peace was only a mirage.
* * *
Driving through western Ghana, my friend Malayee and I turned off the main highway and headed down a small dirt road. I was trying to reach a strip of coastline that, on the map, looked like it might be hiding several perfect pointbreaks. But after more than an hour there was still no sign of the ocean. We passed several villages; nothing more than small groups of mud huts on the side of the road. Children streamed out of the huts and ran after the car, shouting “Ebrunee! Ebrunee!”
“What does that mean, Malayee?”
“They’re speaking Twi,” he explained. “It means ‘White Man.’”
Suddenly I felt very out of place.
The road finally ended at a small fishing village. I walked out to the beach but there were no waves. I pulled out my binoculars and looked down the coast. In the distance I could see the place I had hoped to reach: a perfectly shaped left point, sticking out just right to make the most of any swell. I looked at the kilometers of untamed jungle separating me from my perfect wave and I knew that it was out of reach—at least for now.
I decided to make the most of my trip and hiked up to an abandoned slave fort on a cliff next to the village. I entered the crumbling outpost where, hundreds of years ago, Europeans made their first contact with the “Dark Continent.” Now I was here, on a much different quest.
I walked up to the tower and gazed at my hidden point once more. Then I looked in the other direction. Beneath the fort, hidden from view of the village by a rocky cliff, I could see the backs of waves breaking in the center of a small, sandy bay. The beach was pristine and looked like it came straight out of a travel brochure. Palm trees lined the sandy curves and arched towards the clear blue water. I walked back to the village and drove the car onto a narrow footpath that wove its way through the forest and around the cliff.
I nearly had a head-on collision with a palm tree when I first saw the waves. A light offshore breeze groomed overhead A-frames into perfect peaks that threw over a shallow sandbar. Rights and lefts peeled off in both directions, flawless walls that eventually fizzled out on the sand.
The villagers followed us to their private paradise and children climbed up the palm trees and threw down coconuts, just in case we were thirsty. I frantically changed into some trunks and waxed my board, somehow thinking that if I didn’t hurry it would all disappear. Floating in the water, I looked at the endless stretch of deserted beach and untouched forest, and I felt truly happy. Laughter from the children playing on the beach drifted out on the offshore wind, and even the slave fort, now reclaimed by the forest and the villagers, inspired a feeling of hope. Stroking into the first wave I traced a familiar line across the face and laid into a solid cutback. The spray fanned out and, for just a moment, I felt at home in Africa.
The sky was turning orange when we left the beach. The waves were still good and the decision to leave was not a voluntary one; the village didn’t have enough food to feed us on such short notice. Driving back down that endless dirt road I saw a long, black snake stretched across the road in front of us. I leaned out the window and watched it slither into the bushes. It was a Black Mamba, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. I was a long way from home.
* * *
A large sign marks the entrance to Peace Town, but for some reason I didn’t notice it until I was leaving. It reads:
WAKE UP DO NOT
SLEEP YOU ARE
STILL ALIVE
BOUNCE BACK
The words of the sign followed me as I walked down the dirt road to the nearest village. I left behind the mass graves and the desperation, but what I kept was a feeling of hope. The children can still smile, even with so little. And the families have remained strong despite the pain and horrors of war. Peace is still off in the distance, but the journey to reach it is well underway…