Rhonda Harper has been in Senegal since January. It was meant to be a short trip for Harper, the founder of Black Girls Surf, to do some filming with Khadjou Sambe, a Senegalese surfer whom she’s training for the Olympics and the pro World Surf League. But days before Harper was due to return to the US, she said, the country was “locked down” due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions.

Out of the extended overseas stay has come something groundbreaking: a Senegal-based Black Girls Surf camp with the explicit goal of not only teaching young Senegalese women to surf, but seriously training them to enter the pro ranks. It’s not perhaps the exact timeline Harper had had in mind, but to hear her tell the story of her career leading up to the 2014 founding of Black Girls Surf, that’s only fitting…