Early on in Jamaican surfer Imani Wilmot’s surf career, when she searched for “black female surfer” online the only pictures that would show up were of her. Now, the Jamaican national team surfer runs a women’s surf program called Surf Girls Jamaica that sees 25 women show up to the beach every week.
Imani wasn’t the first girl to surf in Jamaica but she was one of the earliest. Surfing is said to have made its Jamaican debut in the 1960s, when a group of guys, including Imani’s father Billy “Mystic” Wilmot, started to surf for the first time. With three older brothers and one younger, Imani grew up close to the ocean in her hometown of Bull Bay, just outside of Kingston.
“I don’t remember learning to swim,” she says, “being in the water was always something that was just normal. My dad was a fisherman so we had a fishing boat and every day we were always on the beach. My earliest memories are of being in the water with my grandma, we’d go snorkeling around the reef that’s there looking at all the fish.”
Pablo Franco / ISA
When she was eight, Imani was envious that her brothers and father were surfing together without her, so they decided to teach her too. By 14 she was headed overseas for her first international competition. “I experienced a lot of culture shock. How we do surf competitions [in Jamaica] and then going abroad for the first time to enter a competition and realizing other surfers are playing mind games in the water and they’re trying to stop you from catching waves. We never had that, it was always like you go there, you ride the best wave and if you win you win.”
After this experience Imani says she stepped away from surfing for a while and turned her focus to dance and competitive swimming, “Mostly because I didn’t have girls to surf with,” she says. “It was always guys.” The little group of female surfers at the time did have competitions, but the field was so small the places just rotated between them, which Imani found demotivating. But, after a few years she realised that she didn’t get the same fulfilment from her other sports so returned to the ocean with a solution – she would teach some other girls to surf. This was the birth of Surf Girls Jamaica – the surf club that has seen a new wave of female surfers take to the water.
“I started Surf Girls Jamaica when I was in high school. It wasn’t originally registered or anything, I just was like, we’re gonna have a crew and it’s gonna be called Surf Girls Jamaica we’re gonna surf and just have fun.” Imani explains. “My mom is a social worker, my dad started the [Jamaican] Surfing Association, so I had those two forces of building community from a very young age. I didn’t go to typical summer school like other people, most of the time I would go to the children’s home and I would be volunteering there for the summer. My brothers and I used to have a band called From The Deep and we would go and perform for different kids so I always had that value of building community, giving back to the community.”
Jersson Barboza / ISA
When she was still in high school, Imani established an annual surf camp called Surf Like a Girl, where the same group of girls would come back each year during their school breaks. Until about six years ago it remained just this core group but after she connected with a new group of parents who were looking for activities for their kids, Imani set up the “A Team” who started training with the goal of representing Jamaica internationally. “They come and surf every weekend whether it’s waves, no waves, rain or whatever, they’re out there training.” Imani says. “Then their friends started getting involved. Now it’s at a point where random people who have never heard of us before are now seeing us on Instagram saying ‘I want to come surfing.’ Now we have these two girls from the completely opposite side of the island that they travel every other weekend to get here to surf, just to be in the water with us.”
The competitive training is just one part of Surf Girls. Imani, a trained surf therapist, also uses surfing as a tool for healing with regular sessions that focus on wellbeing, rather than surfing outcomes. “The goal isn’t about I’m gonna ride a barrel, I’m going to do these crazy turns,” she says, “it’s really about enjoying being on the ocean surface and the benefits of surfing from a physical and a psychological standpoint.”
“A surf therapy session is typically done in groups and typically we have a circle before we go into water, we talk about what is affecting us today, we talk about our goals, things that we want to achieve. We try to say what we’re gonna leave on the sand, what is it that we want to get from the ocean, looking at that give and take and just sharing in community how we can be there for each other. Surfing is more of an expression of yourself, and if you don’t want to surf then that’s fine, if your goal is literally to ride on your stomach that’s what it is and there’s no pressure to have to stand up.”
“We’ve had girls who have gone to prison for transporting drugs and are now trying to turn their lives around. There’s one person who’s recently been paralyzed from the waist down because of domestic violence and trying to know, ‘how can I still surf, how can I still be a part of this community?’ It’s actually being a part of the community that is helping you to continue every day and giving you something to look forward to.”
“It’s been hard,” Imani says, with much of the equipment and resources for the project having come out of her own pocket. “I don’t charge for my time for Surf Girls, I’ll teach anybody that shows up for free. I have a slot every weekend on a Saturday and a Sunday where it’s absolutely no charge. If you turn up and you want to do a lesson I’ll take you out.”
Surfing has grown in Jamaica in recent years, in particular with its introduction to the Olympics. Imani says it has created an avenue of opportunity for young people from Jamaica to see the world who might not have ever otherwise had the chance to travel. “It’s such a great thing, to have been someone who saw the majority of Jamaicans not even know what surfing is, like they used to say ‘are you going to ski on the sea?’ or they’d see us with our surfboards and be like ‘that boat is so small like what are you doing?’ People had no idea what surfing was. Now, seeing that growth from nobody knowing what it is, to people wanting to see it, wanting to understand and wanting to get their kids involved.”
But there is still a way to go in terms of the development of the sport. Imani is now a mother to her eight year daughter Nya, which adds a whole new layer of importance to the progression of women’s surfing in Jamaica and Imani’s role in it. “I need to show [Nya] that I will do my best so that she understands what it looks like. Having your mom as a role model, it’s different than saying ‘I admire this surfer out there,’ and instead ‘my mom is a surfer and I have seen her put in the hours of training’”.
“I would love to see more representation of Jamaican and Caribbean cultures in surfing,” Imani says. “I feel like surfing is such a diverse sport, it has backgrounds in so many different places all across the world. But what you see out there in mainstream surfing doesn’t represent the reality of surfing. I would just see more girls in the Caribbean going out there and feeling comfortable to be in the water, see themselves and not have to feel like there is a certain minimum beauty requirement to surfing, you can look like whatever you look like and just be out there.”
“I feel like there’s so many more opportunities for boys.There’s so much funding in everything, the chances of a male surf team getting fully funded as opposed to a women’s surf team is significantly different. There’s still competitions in the Caribbean where the male or the female prize money is significantly different.” Imani says.
“I would like to see more equality.” she adds.
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