A surf academy is enticing Senegalese girls back to school

For generations, Seynabou Tall’s ancestors have fished, dived and rowed off the coast of Dakar. It’s the same place where the 14-year-old, who quit school nearly four years ago, is now learning to surf.

She and some 20 other girls are participating in an inaugural Surf Academy which requires they enrol in school, incentivised by the chance to shred waves.

Nearly all come from the little community of Xataxely, a fishing village of narrow…