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Outlook: Surfing and sisterhood - making waves in Jamaica

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Surfing and sisterhood - making waves in Jamaica

27/08/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Outlook, Surfing and sisterhood - making waves in Jamaica

How one of Jamaica’s top surfers Imani Wilmot empowers women to ride the tide

Imani Wilmot is one of Jamaica’s top surfers and was always destined to ride the waves. Now she is helping other women and girls to take up the sport to find healing in the tide.

Imani Wilmot was born into a surfing family – her father is known as the 'godfather' of Jamaican surfing and her brothers are also avid boarders, so she took to it like a duck to water. She was good too, winning competitions and representing her country with pride. But she soon realised that she was the only top black female surfer at those competitions, and that if she wanted a community around her she’d have to create it herself. Imani spoke to Jo Fidgen about how she set up a surf school for girls and women when she was 17, sharing her confidence and discovering the healing power of the waves.
 
British swimmer Beth French has chronic fatigue syndrome, and when she was a teenager her symptoms were so severe she spent a year in a wheelchair. So years later, when she swam all the way from England to France – and was still home in time to put her son to bed – she knew she’d done something really special. But then Beth set herself a huge challenge; she vowed to swim seven of the world’s most dangerous ocean channels in a single year. Along the way she learnt something unexpected. This interview was first broadcast on May 20th 2019.
 
Picture: Imani Wilmot and her daughter Nya
Credit: Lucy Jane

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