More on Gaza Surfing: Sabah, Rawan, Kholoud and Shrouq Abu Gunaimvia browngirlsurfShoruq and Rawan A

More on Gaza Surfing: Sabah, Rawan, Kholoud and Shrouq Abu Gunaimvia browngirlsurfShoruq and Rawan Abo Ghanem are cousins who live in Gaza City and who are breaking serious barriers in their community. They were originally introduced to water sports under the guidance of their fathers, first learning to body board on old windsurf equipment.  They were eventually able to access proper surfboard equipment with the help of international friends and NGOs. They have only started working with actual surfboards in the last two years, under the guidance of their fathers. Their younger sisters, Sabah and Kholoud have also been learning with them.  Palestinian girls and women in conservative Gaza, which is under the control of the Islamist movement Hamas, struggled with what to wear when they went surfing because they did not have any culturally appropriate clothing.  In conservative Islam, women are prescribed to wear modest clothing that does not show the outline of the body.  An initiative was formed with designers from Parsons School in New York City  to create for them culturally appropriate surf gear. Named the Gaza Surfer Girl Project, this is one of the coolest examples of surfer girls making waves of change in their communities.  via womennews.org (2012)[However…] now that they are teens, it’s different.“My family encourages me, although the community thinks it’s shameful to do so,” says Sabah, age 14, as her mother braids her long ponytail.For her older sister Shrouq, 17, the pressure is now particularly intense.The Abu Gunaim family lives in a modest, thatched-roof house just across the street from the beach, in the windswept spot of Sheikh Ejleen. For a while Sabah, as a younger girl, surfed openly on the beach. But now she avoids broad daylight. “Once I got older and became more of a woman, as they say, I had to surf when no one is looking, in the early morning and sometimes late at night,” she says. Both sisters are careful not to go out alone anymore.“I always surf with my father and brothers around now,” says Sabah. “I enjoy it; but not as much. But do I have any other choice?" If their father is nearby, men on the beach are less likely to harass and scold them for flouting constraints on girls’ sports. But sometimes even if their father is there, a male passerby will threaten and harass him to get his daughters out of the water. Still, Sabah remains committed to the sport. "The community might say it is ‘aib,’ a disgrace, for a girl to surf, but it doesn’t feel this way. I want to go to the Olympics with Shrouq and prove them wrong.” -- source link
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