Beyond the Surface: Socially-Empowered Surfing With Emi Koch

“Nothing ever stays the same. You can’t build fences around life. It’s just this on going process. All you have to do is just keep paddling. Simple. There’s always going to be another wave coming.”

A Brokedown Melody
I cannot bring myself to put down a wordy, clinical introduction to an interview with Emi Koch--professional surfer, social activist, pagal ‘aloo’ lover. Instead, i’m choosing to shun the use of all my favourite adjectives, idioms, and cute, little word plays to keep it as real as the blue-eyed ray of sunshine I met, in all likelihood under some banana leaves, on a secret surf getaway to Varkala earlier this year. Her hilarious struggles to learn Hindi and incredibly positive spirit had us halfway between splits and hugs at any given time and our interactions have only grown deeper.
I’d tell you more about her ability to dance on longboards and be a child-whisperer to local kids getting on their boards for the first time but considering she’s given us the most incredible (and detailed) account of her entire life in this interview below, we’ll just leave you to it. All I can promise is, getting to know a spirit like hers a little better, can only make your own a little lighter.

1. Where are you from, where are you right now and where are you headed to next?

I grew up in a small pocket of the world written up in the travel guides as a paradise found. San Diego is a bustling tourist destination known for its beautiful beaches, all-year-round sunshine, craft beers, thriving hippie populations, a growing artisan community, pandas at the zoo, orca whales at the aquatic park, and then there’s the movie Anchorman. My hometown is the last city traveling down the Southern Californian coastline before you find yourself speaking Spanish. Looking back I think that growing up along the US-Mexico border shaped a lot of my social activism.

Right at this moment I am here in California putting together next steps. At the end of August I will start making my way across the world back to India where there are many exciting endeavors ahead and I cannot wait to get started!

2. Give us some insight into your journey with surfing, was it the cause of your heightened social awareness and if yes, how so?

As daughter to a lifeguard legend, longtime surfer, and all-round waterman, salt water practically runs through my veins. I was swimming before I was walking. My dad introduced me to the ocean as if it was my giant magical playground with an abundance of shiny objects. A dynamic place with billions of differently shaped and sized animals dipped in all sorts of psychedelic shades of pinks and yellows and oranges called their home. I remember jumping into the sea for me each time was like receiving a massive hug tackle from a best friend.
I first got sponsored when I was twelve. There was a big winter swell and a local surf shop owner spotted me paddling into waves twice my height. This swell was wrapping around a rocky point and crashing into a small cove. Mostly I was screaming down these massive walls of water only to launch myself simultaneously head / arms / feet first into these gnarly wipeouts. After I could manage to find which direction was up, I would break the surface gasping for breath while wildly wiping my sun-bleached hair out of my eyes and snot from under my freckled nose, smiling, and completely energized to go again. The surf shop sponsored me because of my apparent lack of fear (or common sense). But growing up whenever a massive swell would hit our coastline, my dad would take me on swims straight out to sea through the storm surf and then once to the outside we challenged one another to dives. We had to touch the ocean floor before coming back up and bring sand up as proof. At first I thought these trainings as a way to make me a better ocean swimmer and surfer but what I took was what I learned here back on land as well… I would meet a challenge through to the end. I had to get to the bottom of something before coming back up.

I remember catching a wave one day, landing a difficult maneuver, and thinking to myself as I paddled furiously back out to sea – This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I never want the feelings I get from surfing to go away. I dedicated myself to pursuing a career as a professional surfer. But I found myself getting wrapped up in the lifestyle – wanting to be that girl in the advertisements posing the latest bikini and traveling from one exotic beach to the next on plush yachts chasing after the latest swell. I started modeling and signed with a management agency. I was competing in competitions and gaining recognition. Upon sampling this lifestyle, college was an opportunity I was entirely disinterested in.

 Growing up in San Diego there were only three coordinates. There was North up the coast to a hyped-up Hollywood scene encased like a crystal within Los Angeles, East over the mountains to Las Vegas and then basically New York City once past a whole bunch of whateverness, and then West was the ocean. There was no sense of South.

When I was seventeen my little bubble popped. My high school offered a one-week social justice community service trip to Tijuana and all my friends were going. I went for the social aspect of social justice. I will never forget the scene I laid eyes upon when I crossed the border together with my classmates. Everything looked different almost immediately; the uniform desert beige of smoggy Baja juxtaposed against the various shades of green on the US side. I felt as if the wall reached the sky and had blocked the rain clouds from passing over to this side of the border. I felt this almost immediate sense of uneasiness as if I was straining myself to open up and comprehend this whole hidden other life hidden by rusted barbed wire/ridged walls 15 minutes from my house.

Our week was spent volunteering with different social justice initiatives. We visited orphanages, homeless shelters, deportation stations, and jails. I felt this newfound immense comfort outside my comfort zone and it invigorated me. I felt more and more compelled to engage fully with the people we were visiting and listen to their stories and understand their worldviews and how they differed from mine and what we shared… growing up only 15 minutes apart from one another separated by man-made walls and a line glued to a map years back by important men in the history books.

I was beginning to see the world outside my bliss bubble. But the needle that popped my bubble was our visit to a trash dump. People lived here in the rubbish. A cardboard box and old rubber tires made a poor excuse for a house, but it was indeed a home. The dump overlooked the Pacific Ocean and the sun was just dipping below the horizon. I met a little girl who showed me her one-armed Barbie doll with a bizarre haircut. We played for a little before our bus was leaving. Just as I turned to leave, I remember my eyes caught the glimmering lights of downtown San Diego just off in the distance. And there I could pick out my neighborhood. The last bit of sun highlighted all the houses and reflected back a warm glow against the windows. Somewhere the distance, one of them was mine, meaning for all those years, I could see this trash dump… I had just never been looking. All that was separating me from this little girl was that stupid, unsightly manmade wall and my ignorance. With that shift in perspective,  I crossed back across the border to California feeling something beyond myself… I would give up surfing... I would go to Washington DC, go to college and become an ambassador. I thought I was going to save the world.

3. If you had to draw up some similarities between your philosophy in surfing and your philosophy in activism, what would they be?

My father instilled a deep respect for the ocean in me. I was to never turn a back to the horizon. It was disrespectful to the sea. I learned to step lightly into the waves as a humble guest (even if at times I feel more at home in the water than on land). I am a human submerging into another element… My surfing style is more to glide with the energy and surf in accordance to the flow of a wave… not try and dominate. Every wave is different… waves are but moments in time. I cherish each wave as an opportunity to connect to nature in this incredibly unique way. Surfing is the full of surprises and always changing. Surfing differs from sports like basketball or football where you are stepping out onto a court… the court is concrete and not moving or shifting with the tides. As a surfer you have to be flexible and comfortable with instability. So naturally I think being an activist is completely similar. Most often than not… things do not go as planned and there are set backs.
There are peaks and troughs like waves. I step into communities light on the feet as a humble guest with a bunch of ambitious ideas and flexibility, but like the ocean, the community calls the shots… as they should and you as the guest with the big ideas must glide with the flow. Just as my surfing style is not static but always evolving… I feel this way towards my activism as well. I always want to be a student learning from my environments… whether that be an ocean or a community. If I am a pro surfer… the pro will always stand for progressing and not professional.

4. Tell us about Beyond the Surface, how did it come to be?

I was inspired to start Beyond the Surface International after meeting some skateboarders in Kathmandu while living in Nepal for a summer with a best friend. These skateboarders were affiliated with the Kabul-based nonprofit organization Skatistan that uses skateboarding as a tool for youth empowerment and community engagement in Afghanistan. The year prior I had taken leave from my university because I was struggling between two-life paths… one paddling in a bikini towards a life as a professional surfer and one trudging along in a business suit towards a life as a diplomat.

My friend and I were instructing in art and English at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal for the summer doing what we loved (hanging out with kids and creating messes for creativity’s sake) while also taking time to figure our shit out. Talking to these skateboarders in a Kathmandu coffee shop jolted my way of thinking… I made the connect that perhaps my two life paths could come together as one. Maybe the innate ability for human beings to play / laugh / make our own fun in the sun could be harnessed for collective development across communities. Surfing could be utilized as a tool for self-expression and empowerment… going beyond oneself.

I started researching if there were already surfers out there who were facilitating opportunities for youth from challenging socioeconomic backgrounds to take to the waves and cultivate a greater and deeper sense of self-motivation and empowerment among themselves as individuals and expanding to their larger communities. I thought I could try to liaison for these groups with the industry and establish some sort of platform for different youth-centered surfing initiatives to have a space to find funding or connect with one another while in school and travel to our surf clubs during the summer months. Returning home to California I bought a book on how to form a nonprofit organization for dummies and read half the instructions and a few days later Beyond the Surface International was established.

I went back to school at Georgetown University later that fall and transferred out from the Foreign Service to instead start a degree in psychology and anthropology and justice and peace studies. My journey started with a microscope focus on my own pursuits for happiness… when my bubble popped I felt shameful and zoomed way out into a massive wide scope focusing on the entire world around me… but I completely lost sight of myself, of where I was in this bigger picture… I discovered that establishing Beyond the Surface International was keeping a global perspective but I could see where I was in this picture and the ways I could contribute.

5. And how did the India connection happen? Take us through that journey. 

 When I founded BTSI we had three surf clubs spread across the globe in our small network. Billabong Girls came on board as a sponsor shortly after BTSI was founded. I was a second-year college student. During the school year I dedicated to working on BTSI from behind my laptop in between classes and term papers and would dedicate each summer with Billabong’s support to working on the ground with a different surf club. The first summer I spent in Peru with WAVES for Development based in the small fishing village once known for its marine life and now for the oil drilling facilitated by a Chinese company. The second summer I joined Umthombo in South Africa homeless children on the streets of Durban who had taken to surfing as a tool to develop and support healthy lifestyles and almost using their surfboards as shields against peer pressure into drugs and violence. I always planned to visit the Kovalam Surf Club the summer after my college graduation specifically because Kovalam is in India. I remember when I was a little girl flipping through a May 1997 National Geographic magazine and staring with wondering eyes at photographs accompanying an article on India. For a small child with raging ADHD, I took in from those pictures all these colors and animals and chaos. It seemed like the most incredible place on the planet. I really had no idea… in so many ways.

Early last year Patagonia surf ambassador Crystal Thornburg-Homcy and I did a joint interview for a women’s surf magazine. Crystal and I became fast friends expressing our similar interests in moving surfing beyond the individualized activity but for wave riding to connect individuals to themselves, their communities, and the environment. I expressed interest in someday launching a documentary with the youth in the Kovalam Surf Club using film as the tool and surfing as the medium for storytelling for these groms to share their visions and voices with a global audience. Crystal is married to renowned cinematographer Dave Homcy and both Dave and Crystal had always been intrigued about filming a documentary in India… something about the saturated colors and Dave affiliation for incredibly spicy food.

Around this time I was also accepted into a sports for development and peacebuilding fellowship with the Do School based in Germany. As part of a yearlong program, fifteen young people from around the world would come together for two and a half months for seminars in the sports for development field and then for the remaining months we would be launching our own projects with remote support from the foundation. My project became the film as BTSI initiative. All of us in the program formed really tight bonds and I became quite close with three co-fellows from Canada, Italy, and India. My friend and co-fellow from India was launching his project from Delhi and invited me to be a part of his initiative. The Circle Project aimed to establish a more holistic society by connecting youth from the rural and urban spaces through the process of core-life skills based workshops that served to enable the participating youth to arrive at a better understanding of themselves and their surroundings that was beyond the classroom. I assisted in facilitating the art and photography workshops for both the youth in rural and urban communities and then when both groups combined for one week at the end of March. I moved to Delhi at the end of August (one-year ago) to also gain some experience with an international water sanitation and hygiene startup nonprofit called WASH United India. I worked with schools in creating fun and innovative ways to educate about healthy lifestyles specifically around sanitation. I moved down to be primarily based in Kerala then in November shortly after Diwali (the best day ever). There I started with SISP and the Kovalam Surf Club and was working on surf tourism sustainability research with Soul & Surf in Varkala a few hours North of Kovalam. I filmed with Dave and Crystal first in December and spent Christmas with the Shaka Surf Club outside Mangalore and then the entire film crew arrived for a month of filming in April… it was a whirlwind of an adventure and I cannot wait to return.

6. How easy or difficult has it been to adjust to Indian culture and such a nascent surf culture in your time here?

I think my spirit animal is a complex hybrid version where chameleon... (the lizard that changes its colors to quickly so to blend into any environment)… makes up about fifty percent. I moved to India last August without even picking up a guidebook or even typing “India” into Google. I remember my Indian friend I had only met a few months prior through the fellowship in Europe picked me up at the New Delhi international airport on a hot August evening and we just walked outside. Immediately I felt something similar to the feeling I get each time I jump into the ocean… the one you feel when your best friend hugs you. I felt like the humidity was like an ocean… it just completely wrapped me to the point I noticed the AC from the inside of the terminal building slipping off my back like a blanket from my shoulders. It was stepping into a new element for me. Everything was different… new faces to new towns to new foods to new outfits to new languages to new mannerisms to new taboos to… where was the toilet paper?? It’s a home for wanderlust heart.

The thing that I love about the surf culture from my personal experience in India is that there is a dynamic mix. On the one hand you see the industry trying to take stakes in a number of different locations because surfing and the action sports industry is marketable and can prove profitable. However, then you also have the next generation of surfers coming from small coastal villages who do not know who Kelly Slater is or what Quiksilver is… and they don’t really care. They just want to have fun… their stoked is untouched by the industry. The industry is still lagging in the smaller coastal villages so these kids. I feel their stoke is of the purest nature… it isn’t tainted…

I see the surf scene in India really going mad soon enough. Mad in a good way and a slightly crazed way. The industry will build quickly. Hopefully someone will not monopolize it. There will be this mainstream current running over the industry with surfers jumping into the sport because it is a hot and new scene. However, I do believe there will be a successfully underground movement with artisans and local people alike coming together bonded by that pure stoke. This undercurrent will prevail because it is genuine and true. This is happening in California and I think it will happen in India but I actually believe the undercurrent will be stronger and we are going to see some really beautiful things to come from it that have a uniquely India twist.

7. What’s inspired you the most about the Indian leg of Beyond the Surface’s journey?

When I first moved to India a fellow ex-pat sat me down and told me in a gruff Boston accent: “if you let the little things bother you about India… then you’re really gonna hate this place…” I stared back at this husky international aid worker with big blue bewildered eyes… after a pause he continued with a soft smile, “but then it’s the little things about India that can amaze you if welcome the opportunity… and then your heart will never leave this place…” 

India inspires me… swimming through the August humidity down the bustling streets of Old Delhi with spices and dust engulfing my senses and then to sit with legs daggling off a cliff edge in Kerala watching the fishing boats miles off shore at midnight where it is almost as if the stars above had fainted out of their designated positions in the night sky to land softly in the inky purple sea below… I truly feel like something happened here when continents collided to created some mystical land that is India. Everything in India is painted in the most absolute stunning light from yet another epic sun… funny enough that there is so much beauty in the sunsets and sunrises because there is so much hideous pollution… yet another Indian mind-puzzle… good in evil and evil in good… there is so much grey its almost a deep magenta… and makes sense because it doesn’t make sense and that makes sense to me. I am entranced by the organized chaos that is India. Every time I stepped out onto the street… it is like my senses are on hyper drive but for an adrenaline junkie like myself… living in India is like always paddling out into a massive swell… you will experience incredible highs but you may find yourself in a gnarly wipeout… but that’s what you signed up for so you might as well enjoy the ride.

From my humble perspective it seems to me that India gained independence from the British almost to find a dependence on charity without really ever even asking for it. Poked and prodded by international development organizations relentlessly here and there each eager to push India into this well-established notion of what a well-established developed country means to the rest of the world… but just speaking from my humble experiences… I found a great India to already possess everything that She needs in order to grow into an India that much greater. I see the country entering into some really exciting times ahead… and I cannot wait to see where it grows from here.

8. And what have been the biggest challenges?India sent a few heart-wrenching challenges my way but I certainly grew from each of them and continue to do so. I think one of the biggest challenges was seeing firsthand the incredible circumstances the kids at SISP face on a daily basis. Experiencing the kids smiling and laughing filling up the sea riding waves together and playing in the sunshine I forgot about everything else… but the realities of the abuse and neglect these kids face on land and away from their safe spaces is very hard for me to deal with. Especially these being places I cannot go to protect them (nor should over step my boundaries as an outsider to a very complex community no matter how much insight I try to gain). This is something I have always struggled with in terms of my activism.

9. Favourite surf spots in india so far and places you still want to explore?

I love surfing Lighthouse Beach in Kovalam not because the wave is epic exactly but rather I get to surf with the Kovalam Surf Club kids who absolutely rip and hassle me for waves. It is always a fun time in the water… but Lighthouse Beach can get a nice left coming off the reef. I also love Edava near Varkala about two hours from Kovalam. Around the tip there is also Manapad which has an incredible point break just off the cave where Saint Francis Xavier lived in 1542 and held mass at a church built from an old ship’s mast wrecked in a storm two years before. Whether one believes in something greater or not… I think Manapad has some incredible spiritual energy in the water. The town reminds me of an India version of Baja California.

As far as more places I still want to explore? I’ve only travel bits and pieces of the 17,000 kilometers of Indian coastline… so I’ve got a lot more adventuring to do!

10. What’s your relationship with SISP?  

For five years I worked remotely with SISP through the Kovalam Surf Club. Jelle Rigole is the founder of the Kovalam Surf Club which started off as a small motivational program for the kids at the Sebastian Indian Social Project with the main rule being: No School – No Surfing. Jelle started at SISP as a Belgium student in social work trying to earn his practicum. Now Jelle is like an epic big brother for all the kids at SISP. As a humble community development centre, SISP has been active in the area since 1996 and tries to improve the harsh living conditions of the poorest by offering them free education, medical care, food support, old age care, micro credit unions, literacy classes, training and work in handicraft units. The idea behind the Kovalam Surf Club was to get the children of SISP off the streets outside of the school hours and to act as an extra incentive to keep these kids going to school on a regular basis.

The Kovalam Surf Club was one of the first surf clubs to join the Beyond the Surface International platform. I just got in Jelle over email and asked if he wanted to join me. Five years later Jelle was picking me up from the Trivandrum airport on his Royal Endfield cruising down to Kovalam. My time at SISP I ran some startup jewelry classes for the girls making necklaces out of sea shells. I was a teacher’s assistant in a classroom. I helped Jelle with swim classes two times a week and then was an extra pair of arms to push the beginner surfers into waves on the weekends. Since the film we have also been able to send more funding to SISP. So I guess rather than being a teacher or mentor or volunteer at SISP I feel like my relationship is like more like a big sister because I feel as if I’ve joined a family.

11. You’ve been learning Hindi, show off some of your favourite new vocabulary.

I can count to ten! And I can be conversational up until the point when someone asks me something other than how I am today. I love the word pagal… it is the best word. I also enjoy a few curses… like haati chutar. The predicament I found learning Hindi is that every curse word sounds just like an everyday nice word. That I think is like some inside joke for native Hindi speakers. I am on to you mera dosts.

12. How can people help fulfill your dreams with Beyond the Surface?

If people would like to support our efforts with Beyond the Surface International we can always use funding to plug into our different initiatives as well as spreading the word about our efforts through social media or press. My dream is to find sustainable ways to support the dreams the youth in our surf clubs and projects are cultivating. If anyone is interested in support an individual dream one of our youth platform members then please do get in touch as well!

13. Finally, who and what inspires you in life. 

I am inspired by the underdogs… the most unlikely champions… the young people I feel blessed to know on my journey with Beyond the Surface and various other initiatives are my biggest inspirations. These are the youth growing up on the fringes of societies due to their socioeconomic status or complete lack there of… I like working along the fringes because when a society ignores you… you have the opportunity to ignore societal norms and mainstreams ways of thinking. Unfortunately many youth can find themselves caught in a cycle of crime by breaking laws and this is not what I am suggesting. I advocate for breaking the rules, institutionalized rules of thinking. Creativity flourishes in the dumps, in the slums, and given the right nurturance and support it can be harnessed for greater development (physical and mental). This is a lawless land where cultural norms and institutionalized rules can be broken because they fall short to reach here in the first place. The fringe of mainstream society is where innovation thrives because thinking is already outside the box if you were never raised in one. Inspiration lies deep in the belly of the outliers.

Words: Mandovi MenonImages: Courtesy Emi Koch