A wave of goodwill around the world

By SIMON COLLINS

For 20 years, "Dr Dave" Jenkins went surfing just for fun. Until November 1999.

That's when he first caught the world-famous breaks on the coral reefs of the Mentawai Islands off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

He was in the habit of taking a basic medical kit with him, so on this trip over from Singapore, where he was working for a corporate health company, he took the kit into a Mentawai village on the way out to the reef.

"I told the chief that I had a few drugs and if there was anyone who needed me I would help when I came back in the afternoon," he says.

When he returned, 100 people were waiting for him, many with malaria, TB or pneumonia.

"It became obvious that people were very sick and had nowhere to go. It was an absolute disaster."

He treated about 30 patients before he had to return to Padang, the city on the Sumatra coast where about 30 luxury boats do a lucrative trade taking rich surfers out to the reef.

In Padang, the former Edgecumbe GP started asking questions. He found that 38 per cent of the children in the Mentawais die before they are five. Seventy per cent of families lose at least one child.

"What we have is a situation that is as bad as anywhere in the world."

Dr Jenkins decided that he could not go away and "live with my conscience". So he has stayed.

He has formed a unique organisation, "Surf-Aid", to raise money from the $6 billion-a-year global surfing industry to fund medical help for the 70,000 people of the Mentawais.

"I think it would be a fantastic thing for the Mentawai people to be given the gift of life from surfing. I like that idea," he told ABC's Foreign Correspondent.

But the commitment can be huge. After that first visit to the Mentawais two years ago, Dr Jenkins tossed in his job in Singapore and returned to Auckland with his partner at the time, Bronwyn Morgan. During 2000 they spent six months in London where Dr Jenkins raised money working as a consultant.

"He has been working on Surf-Aid pretty much all the time," Ms Morgan says.

In London he met another New Zealand surfer, Andrew Griffiths, who had read about Surf-Aid. After 10 years working as an investment banker in London, Mr Griffiths was planning a surfing trip around the world, but decided to link up with Dr Jenkins in the Mentawais.

"He had at that stage an idea to do a malaria prevention campaign integrated with surfing, so we could surf and do some work with the people."

Mr Griffiths raised some money from among his friends in London, and he and Dr Jenkins arrived in the Mentawais in November 2000.

While the barefoot Dr Jenkins began treating the sick, Mr Griffiths obtained 200 mosquito nets, impregnated them with anti-malaria drugs and distributed them to people in a few villages.

"For me, it was, 'Okay, there is a vision here to do something and there is actually something that is achievable,"' says Mr Griffiths.

"There are a lot of indigenous people in the world who all need assistance. But just through the combination of people that I met, and interaction with the locals themselves, that gave me the confidence to proceed."

Part of the solution is simple education.

"They don't understand the need to wash their hands after going to the toilet," Dr Jenkins says.

"We quickly realised that the people, even though they are being killed by malaria, didn't know it was transported from one person to another by mosquitoes.

"So we set up a village play in which all the kids dressed up as mosquitoes and we did a song and we did a series of education programmes. Now that whole village is desperately awaiting the arrival of our mosquito nets. We know that is going to drop the level of malaria in that village by maybe 80 per cent."

Surf-Aid aims to train local people to carry on the work. It has employed six Indonesians, including two Mentawai nurses and a Sumatran public health worker. It wants to provide scholarships to finance Mentawai students into medical school.

It needs money. Its target is $US300,000 to $US500,000 ($700,000 to $1.17 million) a year.

So far it has raised "a sizeable sum" from the Lonely Planet travel guide, $A20,000 ($24,300) from the Australian public after the Foreign Correspondent programme screened, $US25 ($58) for each surfer carried by one of the boat companies in Padang, and small donations from three Australian surfwear companies. It's hard work.

"People are very, very cynical," says Dr Jenkins.

"[For] some of the local surf people, this is not their thing, but they don't want to appear bad to anyone else so what they will do is view you with suspicion and try to find mistakes so that lets them off the hook."

The medical work itself is stressful. Dr Jenkins usually sleeps on the floor in village houses.

Other aid workers in the islands have caught malaria and other diseases. Everyone gets diarrhoea.

But there are compensations. Mr Griffiths says there is usually time for a quick surf when the chickens wake the visitors at 5.30 am.

And he will never return to investment banking in London.

"I'd like to have a lifetime association with Surf-Aid. Every aspect is difficult - raising the funding for it, managing the projects for it, understanding the different cultural perspectives out there.

"But it's pretty inspirational to see the results."

Surf Aid International

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