Editing Surfing (section)

===West Africa===

West Africans (e.g., [[Ghana]], [[Ivory Coast]], [[Liberia]], [[Senegal]]) and western Central Africans (e.g., [[Cameroon]]) independently developed the skill of surfing.<ref name="Dawson II">{{cite book |last1=Dawson |first1=Kevin |title=Undercurrents of Power Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora |date=March 20, 2018 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=9780812249897 |pages=28–30 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FyVJDwAAQBAJ |chapter=Cultural Meanings of Recreational Swimming and Surfing |doi=10.9783/9780812294781 |oclc=994296486 |s2cid=202315785}}</ref> Amid the 1640s CE, Michael Hemmersam provided an account of surfing in the [[Gold Coast (region)|Gold Coast]]: “the parents ‘tie their children to boards and throw them into the water.’”<ref name="Dawson II" /> In 1679 CE, Barbot provided an account of surfing among [[Elmina]] children in Ghana: “children at Elmina learned “to swim, on bits of boards, or small bundles of rushes, fasten’d under their stomachs, which is a good diversion to the spectators.”<ref name="Dawson II" /> James Alexander provided an account of surfing in [[Accra]], Ghana in 1834 CE: “From the beach, meanwhile, might be seen boys swimming into the sea, with light boards under their stomachs. They waited for a surf; and came rolling like a cloud on top of it. But I was told that sharks occasionally dart in behind the rocks and ‘yam’ them.”<ref name="Dawson II" /> Thomas Hutchinson provided an account of surfing in southern [[Cameroon]] in 1861: “Fishermen rode small dugouts ‘no more than six feet in length, fourteen to sixteen inches in width, and from four to six inches in depth.’”<ref name="Dawson II" />