AGAINST THE TIDE
IT’S EARLY IN THE MORNING AT BUREH BEACH, a stretch of sand situated on the far tip of Sierra Leone’s Western Area Peninsula. Something apocalyptic is brewing. Fearsome Atlantic waves batter the shoreline. The sky is overcast with the Harmattan, a northerly wind that blots out the sun with Saharan sand. A lone figure looms out at sea.
Again and again, the silhouette disappears beneath the towering waves, which crash down one after the other like soldiers marching out to battle. Each time he resurfaces, imperious and unmoved.
But on the horizon, one wave emerges larger than any other before it. It rapidly swells and foams, cresting several metres high and looking for all the world like it will crush him. At the last moment, however, he jumps up onto a surfboard and cuts across it, twisting and turning his way to shore.
“Dude, did you that?” shouts John Small, strolling up along the sand in his black wetsuit. He takes a seat on a large rock, surfboard in
