Digging at the Roots

Surfer and filmmaker David Mesfin’s journey started in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was born into turmoil in 1973. The following year, the Kingdom of Haile Selassie I was overthrown by a communist revolution that set off two civil wars: Eritrea to the north and Somalia to the south. This unrest caused a famine to grip Ethiopia throughout the ’80s. 

“By that point,” Mesfin says, “every family was searching for means to get the kids out. The army was running out of 18-yearolds. So by 15 they were training you and sending you to fight in the north or south.” 

As one of four altar boys at a Greek Orthodox church, Mesfin was chosen by visiting bishop Dimitrios Couchell to travel to America at the age of 14. The timing can be explained only as divine intervention. It resulted in his adoption by the priest’s family, who lived in St. Augustine, Florida. There, he was introduced to the ocean and riding waves—which, in no small part, propelled his path westward, where he graduated with a degree in advertising from California State University, Long Beach. 

“When I came to California and surfed Seal Beach and Huntington,” Mesfin says,  “I would see Black people here and there.  But I didn’t really see a community until 2011, when my friend Alitash Kebede told me, ‘Hey, there’s this amazing group called the Black Surfers Collective, and they’re starting something called Nick Gabaldón Day [after California’s first documented Black and Latino surfer]. You should go check it out.’” 

In 2020, after George Floyd’s murder and the resulting momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement, Mesfin knew he needed to do something. “My fear was for my kids,” he says. “I could see what happened to George Floyd happening to my son out on the road. In a couple of years, he’s going to drive. What if he ends up dying like that? That’s your fear as a Black person. It’s an unspoken fear that keeps happening over and over again.” 

From that tragic catalyst, combined with inspiration from the Black surfing community, Mesfin made his directorial debut with his documentary film Wade in the Water. 

“I started making these portraits that I explored with my daughter,” Mesfin says about his early impetus for the project. “We put these leaves around her—the concept being to connect back to our African roots. Then the book Afrosurf came out, and that turned me on to historian Dr. Kevin Dawson, whose studies reveal that our aquatic history and surf prowess was documented from Senegal to Angola for over 1,000 years.” 

In Wade in the Water, Mesfin continues to dig at those roots by sharing Africa’s rich history as water people. One thread includes how West African women would dive for cowrie shells, which were used as currency in the region from the fourteenth century through the 1800s. Another explains how, in 1455, Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto hired three Senegalese men to relay a message to his ships anchored in angry seas 3 miles offshore. The shorepound was too heavy for the canoes to break through, so they swam it. After making it to the ships, one of the three men swam back to shore with the captain’s response to Cadamosto, who then declared the Senegalese as “the best swimmers in the world.” 

Mesfin’s film also connects Africa’s surfing roots to the contemporary Black surfing experience, one still affected by racial barriers. With testimonials by Black surfers, the film inspires all surfers to support people of color in reclaiming their space in the ocean—waters many of their ancestors enjoyed and thrived in just a few generations back.

[Photos by David Mesfin.]