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"\"&lt;p style=\\\"text-align:center;\\\"&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Out of Office Reply&lt;\\/strong&gt; is Associate Editor Taylor Paul&amp;#8217;s column on big waves, travel, and other manly bits.&lt;\\/em&gt;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n\\n&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.surfingmagazine.com\\/tag\\/out-of-office-reply\\/\\\"&gt;&lt;img style=\\\"margin: 0pt 25px 15pt 0pt; float: left; height: 160px; width: 160px;\\\" src=\\\"\\/wp-content\\/blogs.dir\\/1\\/files\\/2010\\/11\\/out_of_office_reply.jpg\\\" alt=\\\"Out of Office Reply\\\" \\/&gt;&lt;\\/a&gt;&lt;br \\/&gt;\\n&lt;span style=\\\"font-size:150%; font-weight:bold;\\\"&gt;We\\u2019re in Liberia, not Libya.&lt;\\/span&gt; That seemed to confuse people when we were planning this trip, so I think it&amp;#8217;s best to preemptively clarify. Unlike Libya, it\\u2019s peaceful here. Has been for eight years. The civil wars that raped this West African country during the \\u201880s, \\u201890s and early 2000s are fading scars on this green land, and people smile as people do when they\\u2019re mending and hopeful. And we\\u2019re here, as white people so often are in Africa, exploiting its natural resources. &lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;\\u201cWe\\u201d are me and photographers DJ Struntz and Logan Mock-Bunting. We are also surfers Ricky Whitlock and Jon Rose. Yep \\u2014 three guys documenting and two surfing. We invited several others, but when we mentioned \\u201cAfrica\\u201d without \\u201cSouth\\u201d in front of it people quickly remembered prior commitments. But we came. We\\u2019re exploiting.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;Not like the fat rednecks on the plane ride over, with their pink faces, Chevron patches on their bags and \\u201cMy alcohol has too much blood in its system\\u201d shirts. And not like British diamond dealers, who pay a pittance to the people who actually find the stones and then turn around to slang \\u2018em to us so we can stake claim on our women. No, we\\u2019ve come to help ourselves to Liberia\\u2019s waves. Because like oil, and like diamonds, there&amp;#8217;s plenty, but people here lack the means to properly take advantage. So we come. We exploit.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;And call it white guilt or call it our duty as privileged humans or maybe just call it a positive spin on an otherwise standard surf trip, but we\\u2019re doing some good, too. Jon Rose is guiding us on that front, helping us distribute water filters to the town where we\\u2019re surfing, a place that gets its water from dirty creeks and shallow wells. Jon does this around the world through his non-profit &lt;a href=\\\"http:\\/\\/www.wavesforwater.org\\\"&gt;Waves for Water&lt;\\/a&gt;. This is his full-time gig because, strange as it may seem to you and me, surfing seems less important when you\\u2019re saving lives. And that Jon is a humanitarian leader in the surf world is heartening because he is a leader people will follow. Because in the world\\u2019s most selfish sport, where the words \\u201chumanitarianism\\u201d and \\u201cnon-profit\\u201d are as scary as Target and Nike, Jon\\u2019s a f&amp;#8211;king rock star. He\\u2019s got an apartment in Port au Prince. He dated Pam Anderson. He pals around with Sean Penn. And though he\\u2019s really good at life, he isn\\u2019t preachy. He doesn\\u2019t thrive off your guilt. His formula \\u2014 surf in the morning, get shit done in the afternoon and relax in the evening with a happy heart and a belly full of whiskey \\u2014 is perhaps the best I\\u2019ve sampled.&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n&lt;p&gt;So yeah, not a standard surf trip. Sunday we rode in a rusty heap of scrap metal from the surf to Monrovia, today we\\u2019re being chauffeured in an air-conditioned SUV. Last week we slept on soggy mattresses in a concrete box, this week we\\u2019re in a fancy hotel with Iceland Air flight attendants poolside. On Saturday we set up networks to distribute the water purifiers, yesterday we played blackjack &amp;#8217;til 5 a.m. Friday we interviewed locals who lost their families in the war, tonight we met with a guy from the UN and tomorrow, f&amp;#8211;k if I know, I\\u2019m so spun out with all this Africa that I\\u2019m just hoping I can fall asleep tonight. Probably will. The whiskey helps. &lt;strong&gt;\\u2014Taylor Paul&lt;\\/strong&gt;&lt;\\/p&gt;\\n\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.surfingmagazine.com/originals/opinion/out-of-office-reply-white-guilt/>