Hedonists and Beats

14 February 2010

Uganda entry: 5

I went white water rafting on the White Nile on Friday, and I got a bad sunburn on my thighs. I guess I shouldn’t have worn my short swimsuit, but we all suffer for fashion. Nevertheless, it was an incredible experience. The massiveness of the Nile, the magic and history of the river, as well as the intense class 4,5, and 6 rapids made me think about the wonders of nature, and its role in the human experience. Since time immemorial we’ve heard stories about the importance of the Nile, and what it means to the people whose lives it touches. It is a source of life and subsistence. The spirit of the river is palpable. On one of the class 6 rapids, we had to portage our raft around by land, and from the bank I watched in amazement the flow of the giant rapid. My heart fluttered in an inexplicable flurry of excitement. We watched as a kayak went through the rapid, being thrown about and tossed into the air by the majestic movement of the water. The sheer bulk of the water, the billions of gallons all moving together in such beauty, it takes your breath away.

Our guide’s name was Lee, a temperamental Scot who had been a white water guide for the past 10 years in Europe, North America, and Africa. He was 28 and flirtatious and I’m sure that he was very successful playing Casanova with the tourists. At the take-out, we were greeted with beverages and beef’n’pineapple kebabs, and on the ride back to the compound in the open-air bus, Lee bought our group a pack of cigarettes to much acclaim. Once back at the compound, with its hostel-like dormitories and guest tents, I got to see the life of the raft guide in all of its glory. There is an interesting, and sometimes indistinguishable line between entertaining tourists and pursuing one’s own hedonism. And I’m jealous of that life to a certain extent. Lee was completely content with his life of world travel, laying scantily clad tourists, and floating white water everyday, and that’s an appealing lifestyle. In the open-air bar (everything is open air, it doesn’t matter, it’s the equator) groups crowded around to drink with all the guides and to exchange stories, to talk about world travel and to flirt. It got me thinking about my life, as I suppose most of these experience do. I’ve been reading “The Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac lately, and I’ve been thinking about living a life much akin to those of the Beat generation, or raft guides, one in which my own concerns or my own search for truth would prevail. I am on a search for truth, I suppose, but that’s always been about my interaction with others, and my desire to make some sort of change in the world, and I don’t mean change in the sense of Beat revolution, I mean something more substantial and tangible. I’m not trying to open-minds or conscientize anyone. But I’m nonetheless jealous of their ability to evade reality, to get drunk every night and raft every day, to read Zen books and hike Mt. Matterhorn because I have no other commitments. On the other hand, I’m glad that I have some other purpose to serve. It’s too bad that I can’t live a life of hedonism, but Hegel wouldn’t approve of that choice. I have too many thoughts that I need to make concrete with my action and my labor, and I can’t remove myself to some obscure corner of the world and interact with drunken tourists and pseudo-intellectuals. I’ve been over this terrain before, and I don’t want to be so repetitive, but I’m excited about my future. I’m excited about my present; living in the developing world that I’ve studied so diligently is incredible. Perhaps I’m undervaluing it. It’s hard to believe that I’m actually here, even after a month and a half. I haven’t even begun to attempt to understand that political atmosphere here. OK, I’ve been reading Human Rights Watch while I’m in class, but there’s so much more to interpret than the Western perspective. The newspapers here are insane, and I don’t know which ones are government mouthpieces and which ones are legitimate, but I suppose it will be worth finding out. My incredulity at my experiences here have yet to become blatantly real, and I can still laugh about many things that I find intriguing, because, really, they seem so much like I’m in the Twilight Zone. But maybe that means I’m living a life detached from reality. And maybe I’m no better than a hedonist or a Beat. Reality is a difficult concept to grasp, and I think people have a few different ways of avoiding it. I guess I should stop now.