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Joe of the JungleBy Joe Holloway
My head was pounding when the nurse stuck the IV into my hand. "This should make you feel a little better," she said. "I will be back in a while to take some blood samples for the CDC [Centers for Disease Control]."
I had come to the Dominican Republic as part of a joint venture between Baylor's environmental studies department and
 the business school. The business students were in charge of seeing how different companies in the country--specifically those in the sugar and ethanol industries--are run, and the environmental studies students were supposed to put those practices into an environmental context and collect some water samples to test for fecal coliforms.
However, after we landed, it hadn't taken long for me to come down with a 103 degree temperature. (That's me, pictured left, feeling pretty sick.) After three days, I took a trip to the Dominican hospital. "The CDC? I hope it's nothing serious," I said to the nurse when she returned for the blood sample. "We will get the test results back in three days and let you know," she said. "Just let that IV finish, and you're free to go."
This was not the way I had envisioned my last day in Santo Domingo. However, in the days before I got sick I had experienced so much of the country that I found it hard to be too upset.
After all, our group had traveled to the gorgeous white-sand beaches of Boca Chica, toured the sugarcane fields in the countryside, and visited the western hemisphere's oldest monastery, nunnery, hospital, university, and cathedral (pictured below).
 Our tour of the countryside also proved to be interesting. We learned that the decreased profitability of sugar production has caused the rural sector, which was once the lifeblood of the nation, to rethink how the crop is used. One of the most promising new directions the Dominicans have taken is to employ the crop in the production of ethanol.
As our van took us around the sugarcane fields surrounding one of the two functioning state-run mills, one of our professors, Dr. Larry Lehr, taught us the processes behind ethanol production. In February, the Dominican government announced two new private plants would produce thirty-five million gallons of ethanol per year. Using sugarcane to create the ethanol, a residue called "bagasse" is used as a biofuel to produce thirty megawatts of renewable energy per year as well. We also met Omar Bros, a man who plans to create several mobile processing plants capable of producing the fuel on a smaller scale. Mobility removes the trouble of transporting sugarcane and helps poor farmers who cannot afford to grow mass quantities of the crop.
Eventually it came time for us to leave Santo Domingo, but not before the environmental group took another water sample. Then we all got on a bus headed for Santiago, the Dominican Republic's second-largest city.
Santiago was the place where our group split in two. The business students stayed for three days to tour businesses around the city, but the environmental group stayed only a day as the industrial hub proved to be of little interest to us. Trading the concrete jungle for a real one, we headed into the mountains to experience the top of the Dominican watershed firsthand by whitewater rafting and horseback riding to a remote waterfall. The rafting provided the experience of a lifetime. Strapped into lifejackets, given helmets and oars, we descended through the rapids. But however large the falls were, they weren’t half as impressive as the one at the end of our horseback ride we took the next day.
After crossing rivers, galloping down tiny dirt roads through dusty little villages, and generally feeling like cowboys, we
 left our horses at the entrance to a narrow path that would lead us to one of the biggest waterfalls any of us had ever seen. Water rushed over a high ledge, falling into placid pools below. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
The ranch where we stayed was remarkably simple. The bungalows where we slept surrounded a small dining area consisting of picnic tables under an open-air awning--meaning no air conditioning. Luckily, the nearby river flowing through the mountains was pleasantly cool.
The next day we gathered new water samples and boarded the van to Puerto Plata, where we rejoined the other half of our group. We only stayed one day at the tourist-oriented town on the island's north shore. Pressed for time, most of us chose to shell out some extra pesos to either go on an ATV ride through the countryside or go scuba diving. I was part of a group of five people that went diving.
 Schools of tropical fish surrounded us as soon as we reached the bottom. We saw everything from stingrays buried beneath the sands of the ocean floor to coral that retracted into itself when we waved a hand in front of it. Once we had thoroughly explored the reef, we ascended to the surface, climbed back in our little dinghy, and headed back to shore.
The next day we traveled back to Santo Domingo to spend our last night in the Dominican Republic, checking our water samples in the hotel. Every single sample turned out to be contaminated, including the sample from the ice we had used the entire trip. "Maybe that's what had made me sick," I thought.
That was the closest to a diagnosis I ever received. By the time the hospital called me with my test results from the CDC, I was feeling better and didn't recognize the phone number, so I rejected their call. I guess I'll never know what I had.
If you would like to respond to this story, send an e-mail to Between the Lines Editor.
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