Kabungo Vibes — Jake Rupert

Inspiring people can pop into your life in the most unexpected places.

For example, I found one who sleeps in a tent in a surfing commune compound that he created 20 feet from the Atlantic Ocean just outside Tarrafal, Santiago Island, Cape Verde, Africa.

I was there to take a shot at surfing. I tried seven years ago, loved it and I figure I better give it a real go before my body gets any creakier or forget about it.

So asked Google AI, which is replacing my brain, and it told me Cape Verde was the closest place to my home in Italy I could find with waves and warm waters in February, it gave me some on-the-beaten-path places to look at. They looked nice but busy and learning surf in a busy spot sucks. You tick off the good guys with your incompetence.

I looked harder and found Kabungo Surf School in Tarrafal mentioned in a blog. No website. I looked on Facebook. It had some pictures of people surfing.

Good enough for me. I booked flights, arrived, and went to the camp.

Rough thatch huts and tents lined a dirt courtyard with some reclaimed chairs, benches, tables, and a hammock. There was a communal camp-fire kitchen and well-used surf boards and wet suits lay everywhere. A handful of super-laid-back, super-fit people lounged around, and a heavy smell of weed seemed baked into everything - the people, the things, and the dirt.

In front of the camp, big waves swelled as talented people rode them like ballet dancers. It was daunting.

I asked around for lesson, and soon I met Kabungo Borges, the surf-school owner.

I explained my level of ability – almost zero – and my idea to try a couple of days and see if I could get it. Right away, his smiling face, open attitude, good nature, and good grasp of self-taught English put me at ease.

“Let’s try it, and see what happens,” he said.

Next day at 8 a.m., after a nervous night – those waves at the camp were big – I arrived and Kabungo and his buddy Jason had boards and wet suits stacked in the bed of a Toyota Helix pick-up. Twenty minutes of bumping down the coast later, we came to a bay with nice fat rollers.

“Grandma waves,” Jason beamed as we got ready.

That first day was humbling, but just good enough to try again the next day, which was way better.

Over the next 10 days, I had Kabungo plus Jason, Joao, or Paulo with me, like right beside me, for eight full lessons, and when they had groups of other tourists to teach, they gave me a board and let me screw around by myself. If you look closely at some of the pictures of me surfing, you will see Kabungo or one of the guys in the background and another one in the foreground. Kabungo sat waiting with me for the waves for hours, teaching me how to read the water and get in position. When the wave arrived, they gave me a shove to catch it, yelled to get up, and if I caught it, the foreground guy would direct me on the wave and yell at me to dump out if I was getting too close to the rocks.

It was way, way more attention than I ever expected, and it worked way, way more than I expected too.

In two days, they graduated me to medium “auntie” waves at another spot for four days, then back to the smaller ones and finally one day on the big break waves in front of the camp on a smaller, faster board. Here, I mostly wiped out badly and got pummelled in the surf, but I managed to catch a few.

And it was all because of Kabungo and his guys.

They were endlessly patient and positive. When I had a good run, they would high-five and cheer. They wanted me to succeed. After teach wave, Kabungo would go over what I did right and wrong.

Over those days in the water and on land, I got to know Kabungo’s story. And here, almost 600 words into this scribbling, comes the inspiring part.

Kabungo is from Tarrafal and is 46 years old with the body of a world-class athlete half his age. He was living a very normal life up until he was 20. Cape Verde is an African country, and by those standards, he was doing OK. He was running a carwash in town.

“Boring, but enough,” he said.

That’s me on the right barely standing up.

Then one day his life changed. He saw group of tourists walking with surf boards towards the ocean. Curious, he followed them to the big break (where the camp is now) and watched as they rode the waves.

“I knew straight, I want to do that,” he said.

He saved enough for his first surfboard and with no teacher, he headed to the big- break waves alone. In a month, he had the basics, but more so, the thrill of the sport, the absolute joy you get from riding a wave, had him.

“Discovering surfing was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he wrote to me. “It changed my perspective on life. You can make a life doing something you love. Since I started surfing, my life has been dedicated to it. Surfing and training hard.”

He set up a tent under a thatched roof on the shore of the ocean with the big break right in front in order to be a close as possible. For the next few years, his life was surf, car wash, surf, sleep, and repeat.

Sometimes tourists would come and he’d show them the break.

He said he did it for the love of surfing, to share his knowledge, and to help them enjoy themselves.

Me on the right. Rory wiping out on the left. Not a great picture but I had to include it in honour of Rory, who was taken lessons too. (Sorry Rory.)

“Surfing makes me feel good, but helping people surf makes me feel better than good,” he said.

Then one day, he went out with a couple tourists, and when they were done, they gave him $1000 Esc, the local currency (about €10) which he would normally make in a day washing cars.

“A light flash in my head,” he said.

He got a board and wrote “Kabungo Surf Camp” on it and stuck it outside his tent and started telling people in town to send surfers his way. Pretty soon, the car wash gig was over, and he had enough money to buy a couple more boards.

He also rode the waves as much as he could developing his technique. In 2008, he won the Cape Verdean national surfing championship, as he did in 2013 and 2014, the same year made it to the semi-finals of the African Surf Championship. In 2016, he had his best finish – 3rd in Africa.

At the same time, the school got busier and busier. More money came. More boards and wet suits were purchased.

The view of the big break from the surf camp compound.

Eventually, people joined in the camp. More tents and thatched huts sprouted, more people rode the waves with him. He taught local guys to surf, and they helped him teach more tourists. Then hardcore surfers from around the world started trickling in and sleeping in tents.

After his competitive days ended, Kabungo took his earnings and opened beach bar/restaurant on the main beach in Tarrafal. Comfortable tables and chairs, beach loungers, nice music, tasty food, cold drinks, feet in the sand with the waves in front.

Kabungo’s is the place to go in Taraffal.

He’s also involved in the town’s tourism development and politics now. He even bought a modest house in the town, but he rarely sleeps there as he prefers his thatch hut at the camp.

“The sound of the waves man,” he said. “The wind. The people around. I sleep better here.”

And I can see why. It’s an inspiring place.

It’s embracing, positive, healthy. Amongst the 10 or so people living at the camp when I was there, you could see it. As soon as a meal was done, everybody cleaned up. No garbage anywhere, and the shared areas where clean. One of the guys had a broken foot and the others were taking care of him.

I met a guy from Germany who had come twice a year for five years. He said he leaves refreshed mentally, physically, and spiritually. He said he’d travelled the world looking for great waves with a no-stress vibe – and found it in Tarrafal.

Kabungo created all this from nothing. The surf school, the bar, the compound, the vibe all reflects him – warm, enthusiastic, supportive, fun, and positive. In a jaded world, he is a shining example of the better part of human nature, and I’m super happy to have met him and gotten to know him a little bit.

Me, Jason and Kabungo with the grandma waves in the background.

When I asked if he always as positive as he is now, he said no. He wasn’t all that happy when he was washing cars.

“I go surfing one day, and I love it,” he said. “It’s all I do now, and I love it. I help people do it, and I love it because they love it.”

His favourite part is teaching kids to surf, including his 12-year-old son who splits time between Tarrafal and Switzerland where his mother lives.

“Watching kids surf makes me feel good,” he said. “They are so happy, So I’m so happy.”

Kabungo’s surf school looking down the Santiago Island coast where the waves break in various sizes and configurations for several kilometres.

Kabungo, to use a new cliché, is a man living his best life. He found something he loves and is making a life out of it.

That’s inspiring.

That’s powerful.

I went to Tarrafal with the goal of learning to surf. I’m not there, but I’m on my way.

That’s great.

But what’s even better is that I met an inspiring person. That doesn’t always happen.

I want to surf other places, but I feel that until I get really comfortable on the board by myself, I should stick with lessons. And I can’t image a better place to do it than Tarrafal and, especially, with Kabungo.

He’s great and I wish more of us were like him.

I just thought you should know that.

-30-

P.S. - I tried to steal this video off Kabungo’s Insta site, but I couldn’t but it’s so cool I just gotta tell you to check it out. That’s him in the background surfing the second wave. Check it out:

https://www.instagram.com/torquato_tavares_jr/reel/DK-mpYaozIB/