A Crew of Young Female Surfers Are Breaking Barriers in Remote Madagascar

Madagascar, with a coastline of more than 6,000 kilometers, is an island off the east coast of Africa that doesn’t frequently cross the minds of surfers across the globe who journey looking for waves. In fact, many of the breaks that sit along its southwest corner go unsurfed for days and days of the year. With offshore reefs that are only accessible by boats met at the jettyless shores by carts pulled by cows, Madagascar is a surf destination seemingly frozen in time.

New Zealand national and long-time resident Blair Rogers runs one of the few surf tour operations in the southwest, and in April 2020, as tourism dried up on the island, something extraordinary happened – the southwest saw it's first crew of local female surfers.

“In April 2020, at the very beginning of the Covid crisis, Madagascar had just firmly closed its borders to all foreigners and the hotel in Anakao was completely empty,” Blair said. “I decided to make the most out of a bad situation and teach my little sister-in-law Bella and my son Josh's cousin Andrea, to surf on the little beachie just down from the hotel. When we got there, there were a bunch of little grommie girls from the village surfing on old pieces of broken pirogue (local dug out boat), and the girls quickly became friendly with them and they started sharing the boards and all had a ball catching waves together.”