Surfers Send Aid to a Former Paradise

Relief organizations delivering tsunami aid to some of the remotest parts of Indonesia this week are seeking help from an unusual ally: a group of hard-core surfers.

Surf Aid International, a nonprofit organization with offices in Encinitas, Calif., has been spearheading the effort to aid Nias, an island off western Sumatra where an estimated 272 died and 2,000 were left homeless by the Dec. 26 tsunami, according to some reports.

To the vast majority of Americans, the island is at most an obscure blip on a vast blue globe. But to a class of globetrotting surfer, it is home to one of the world’s great waves, a perfectly shaped right-breaking freight train at Lagundri Bay.

The cruel irony of a wave savaging this island was not lost on Surf Aid’s members. And they were in a unique position to help.

The group was founded by surfers four years ago to help the people of the Mentawai Islands, a chain about 175 miles southeast of Nias that is also known for excellent surf. One website called the area “surfing’s Disneyland.”

Onshore, however, residents have alarmingly high rates of preventable diseases like malaria, which Surf Aid has been combating for four years.

Since the tsunami, Surf Aid has recruited four surfing charter boats from the Sumatran port city of Padang to be packed with medical supplies and sent to Nias with doctors and translators who have worked with local people before.

Six-figure pledges have come from surf-wear companies Quiksilver and Billabong, according to Gary Sirota, Surf Aid’s Encinitas-based director of legal affairs. The government of New Zealand recently promised a matching grant of up to $300,000, he said.

“The surfing community is really stepping up to the plate,” said Paul Riehle, a San Francisco surfer and member of the group’s U.S. board of directors. “They were already on the ground. They know these cultures, the shamanistic cultures and Muslim cultures, and are sensitive to them in terms of bringing aid. And we’re using the surf charter industry over there, because the only way to get to these islands is by boat.”

The response to the crisis on Nias exemplifies the new connections that tourism has forged between Westerners and the faraway coastal regions of the Indian Ocean. Fifty years ago, countries like Thailand and Indonesia were among the most exotic recreation destinations on the globe. Today, they are accessible vacation options.

Thousands of U.S. citizens, as well as European tourists, were in the region when the tsunami hit. The U.S. State Department is investigating 2,600 inquiries into Americans who remain unaccounted for. Thirty-five Americans are confirmed dead.

Surfers who have flocked to Indonesia in recent years typically plunk down big money -- and log one-way travel times of up to 48 hours by boat and plane -- to boast that they have braved the waves of “Indo.”

The discovery of the west Indonesian coast by surf fanatics is part of their decades-long quest to find the most beautiful, remotest and least populated surf breaks in the world depicted in the 1966 documentary “The Endless Summer.”

The secret of west Indo, kept mostly among New Zealand and Australian surfers, did not last long. Surf tourism to the Mentawai Islands began soaring about 15 years ago, as word spread about the surf there, said Anthony Marcotti, a Huntington Beach surfer who operates Saraina Koat Mentawai Surf Charters. The company runs excursions to the islands from Padang.

Surf magazines and their photographers followed. By 2000, people were complaining about the crowding on the Mentawai Islands, where conditions were so primitive that most surfers bunked on charter boats anchored offshore.

Around the same time, a New Zealand doctor named Dave Jenkins found more serious problems. While on a surfing excursion in the Mentawai Islands, he set up an impromptu health clinic at one of the local villages. What he found shocked him -- malaria and a host of other illnesses were rampant.

“Just inside the tree line of many of these islands, the natives were suffering from diseases that we had eradicated from [Western] countries 100 years ago,” Sirota said.

Jenkins quit his job, sold his house and moved to the Mentawai Islands with another New Zealander, Andrew Griffiths. Working with the Indonesian government, UNESCO and other groups, they founded programs to train local health workers, immunize children against diseases like measles and diphtheria, and train people how to lower their risk of contracting malaria.

Sirota said the group’s programs, which include distributing chemically treated mosquito netting, have resulted in a 75% reduction in malaria cases in the villages they have targeted.

It was no radical assumption, then, that surfers calling Surf Aid offices expected the group to respond to the tsunami disaster somehow. At first, the group deferred to larger aid organizations, but it became clear that Surf Aid’s expertise would be helpful on Nias.

Calls for individual donations, meanwhile, are making their way through the international surfing community: This week, popular websites including www.surfline.com and www.wet sand.com were encouraging visitors to donate to Surf Aid.

In Ventura County on Wednesday, pro surfers Chris, Keith and Dan Malloy hosted a separate fundraiser for affected areas in Indonesia.

Chris Malloy, 33, said he and his brothers felt they had to do something after watching terrifying video footage from so many places where they had surfed in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. “It really hit us hard to know these kids we’ve taught to surf and helped along ... that there’s a good chance a lot of them are dead,” Chris Malloy said.

The first boat enlisted by Surf Aid has left Padang for Nias, and three others, including one of Marcotti’s charters, will leave by Monday.

A Santa Barbara nonprofit group, Direct Relief International, has donated about $70,000 in medical supplies to Surf Aid. The boats will also be carrying 5,000 mosquito nets to counter malaria outbreaks.

For Sirota, a longtime surfer, the effort offers a chance to give something back to an area that has brought joy to so many faraway strangers.

“Once we’ve seen it, it’s hard to turn your back on it,” he said.