Sharing the Sport - Coaching in Senegal

By Melissa Bray

Senegal, on the west coast of Africa
© Copyright

Coaching is hard. Some rowers-turned-coaches say it’s more demanding than being an athlete. Imagine then: you’re in a foreign country, you are teaching a sport that is as unfamiliar as snow in the Sahara and you have rowing equipment that is as strange as a bicycle to a fish. You are working within another culture and mentality, you know no one and you only have three weeks to teach a sport that takes most people years to learn.

This is the task Edgard Dezuari will face. Dezuari is leaving behind the comfort of the Swiss summer and his PHD studies in Architecture to help implement the initial learning process of rowing in Senegal as part of FISA’s rowing development programme. ?Everything will be new,? says Dezuari. ?They don’t know what a rowing boat is. They have never used this kind of boat on the sea and don’t know how to get in and out of it.?

Dezuari was chosen for the task because of his rowing and coaching experience as well as his extensive travels. He began rowing in Lausanne, Switzerland at the age of 14 and started coaching in 1987. His travels include six months in Agoual, Morocco, a village at 2,400 metres elevation with no electricity or water and 100 km of sand to the nearest road. From this experience Dezuari says, ?I know that you can do a lot when people are used to finding practical and simple solutions to difficult problems.?

The enthusiasm in Senegal has been tremendous and Dezuari is worried that too many people want to be involved in the initial teaching, rather than not enough. Senegal has already set up the country’s national rowing federation and donated boats were shipped earlier this month from Switzerland.

Saint Louis, Senegal. One of the locations for rowing.
© FISA

Dezuari leaves at the end of July and will be based in the northern town of Saint Louis on the river Senegal until mid August mainly working with national coach, Mamadou Diallo. Despite this short amount of time, he believes that just his presence will be valuable.

Dezuari sees an important part of being the first teacher is to ensure people are motivated to continue the sport. ?When you don’t know how to row it’s not always a pleasure. I have to be careful with the atmosphere. I have to motivate and set a good beginning for the future.?

As a volunteer, motivation for this project comes from Dezuari’s desire to help in a way that is not financially oriented. ?For me to share something about sport is to share something where the object is not financial profit,? he says.

This is the second report on the presence of rowing in Senegal. The first one can be found by clicking here .