https://reasonstobecheerful.world/sri-lanka-seasisters-surfing/
"When 18-year-old Ishi Mosha — who goes by the nickname Amzhii — glides down
the face of a wave, she feels alive. Amzhii just finished school, but she’s
already one of the few local female surf instructors in Sri Lanka. “I want to
be as free as the ocean,” she says before she paddles out into the sea at
daybreak. “When I’m out there, I feel as if there’s no care in the world.”
In December 2023, Amzhii learned to explore the joys of the ocean with
SeaSisters, a community of women who conduct free swim and surf sessions for
young girls and women in Amzhii’s hometown, Weligama, 148 kilometers south of
the Sri Lankan capital Colombo. As a kid, Amzhii watched “Queen of the Waves,”
a song from the animated 2010 movie
Barbie in a Mermaid Tale during which
Barbie effortlessly skims along a curling wave, over and over. “Now I want to
film my own ‘Queen of the Waves’ song,” says Amzhii.
Sri Lanka is one of Asia’s leading surf tourism destinations. Yet social norms
and fear of the ocean keep many women from accessing the waters. This not only
keeps women from enjoying the ocean but also prevents them from benefiting from
the socioeconomic rewards it can bring, including through work as swim and surf
instructors.
SeaSisters’ co-founder Martina Burtscher recognizes that local women have
untapped potential. “Surf tourism is largely male-dominated, with most surf
camps and schools run by local men or foreigners,” she says. Burtscher grew up
in landlocked Austria and “fell in love with surfing” at 18, but noticed that
many women who grew up on the coast across the globe — including in Sri Lanka —
were not in the water. “I found it very unfair,” she says. “A woman from a
landlocked country like me could enjoy the ocean while others who had the ocean
on their doorstep seemed to face barriers.” But “the ocean is for everyone,”
she adds.
Burtscher first visited Sri Lanka in July 2017 while working on her master’s
thesis, which focused on surfing for women’s empowerment. She met a small
collective of local women on Sri Lanka’s east coast, who felt empowered through
surfing, but faced sociocultural barriers to participating in the sport. During
their conversations, the idea of starting a surf club popped up. So she
returned a year later and helped set up Sri Lanka’s first local women’s surf
club with American surfers Tiffany Carothers and Amanda Prifti. The initiative
gained momentum, and local women began reaching out to them on Instagram to ask
for surf lessons.
So Burtscher and Prifti moved to the country’s south coast and began SeaSisters
in October 2018 with just six young students to support more Sri Lankan women’s
access to the ocean. Over the next six years, SeaSisters trained 150 women and
girls to surf and swim while navigating the Covid-19 pandemic and the country’s
worst-ever economic crisis."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
