Catching Up with Usman Trioko, Desert Point’s First Surfer

To foreign ears, the story of your average Indonesian surfer sounds like a Hollywood film script. Take Usman Trioko, the first surfer from Desert Point and one of the stars of Nusantara, a film dedicated entirely to indigenous Indonesian surfers. 

As one of 13 children who grew up in the dusty, desert poverty of nearby Bangko Bangko village, Usman learned to spear fish as a child, which he traded for rice to feed his family. He learned to surf on broken boards left behind by travelling surfers...