Looking Back- Life After the DR-eam

By Alex Ramey | February 28th 2023

Somewhere in the bowels of my parents’ basement, I still have the program guide I picked up that day. Flipping through those colorful, glossy pages I was mesmerized. I saw a perspective on travel, education, and exchange I’d never known as a teacher nor a student. I knew right away it was something I wanted to be a part of. 

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In the winter of 2017-18, I was working as a marine science educator at a small nonprofit in Coastal Virginia. Basically, I taught kids about fish and forests and ecosystem services, and regularly jumped in a pit of marsh mud as an “immersive educational experience.” It was a great job – I worked with wonderful people and spent every day outdoors. There was a part of me that always felt a little dissatisfied though. Groups of students came and went through our classes, without ever having the chance to really connect with our local community, or to see the human side of all those ecosystems I taught them about. 

I was tabling at a camp fair at a local middle school, trying to recruit kids for our summer programs, when I noticed the booth for Rustic Pathways.

When I applied to be a Program Leader for Rustic, it felt like a long shot – a VERY long shot. I was so certain through my application and interview process that I would have to be some kind of jet-setting, globe-trotting,  #citizenoftheworld to work for a global travel company. But Harry Alvarez (then Regional Director for Rustic) for reasons I still don’t understand, gave me a shot. I was assigned to lead a program for high-school aged students focused on marine conservation in Bayahibe in the Dominican Republic. It was like a dream.

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When I think about my time leading travel programs in the Dominican Republic, I’m always hit with feelings of warmth and joy, closely followed by sadness and loss – the one-two punch of nostalgia. It’s hard to sum up what that experience was like, and how it changed me. 

Have you ever felt like you were completely out of your element but also overjoyed to be there at the same time? That was me, for 10 straight weeks. 

Harry will tell you that I was the only Program Leader to show up with a homemade binder. I was so nervous, I did everything I could to prepare myself. So I printed out all the resources they sent us about the Dominican Republic. I hole-punched every page about the DR from the Rustic Pathways Program Guide. I constantly scoured the internet to learn everything I could about Dominican history, culture, and cuisine. I also LIVED on DuoLingo for months (no, I still can’t speak Spanish). 

But the thing about travel – real travel, deep travel –  is that no amount of studying, watching YouTube videos or Lonely Planet guides will ever substitute physically immersing yourself in a new place. 

To be a stranger in someone else’s land is, and should be, transformative. You have to shed a layer of yourself and become humble and vulnerable. I don’t think I ever felt more vulnerable than when I lived in a country where I didn’t know the native language. I remember feeling stupid and helpless, constantly tripping over my poorly-rolled Rs and panicking when I couldn’t understand how much to pay someone for the bus. I remember feeling frustrated by the disconnect between my brain and my words. 

But I’m also incredibly grateful for that experience. 

It made me think about how tied up our identities are with the way we express ourselves and use our language to communicate. Me, I’ve always been the type to use fancy words and academic jargon in everyday conversation. It was incredibly humbling to revert back to, if I’m honest, pre-K level language skills. “Sounding smart” was a layer of me I had to shed, and it was hard. I had to find a way to be myself, in my new skin. 

All that layer-shedding and finding myself that summer resulted in me crying… a lot:

• I cried when I wanted to connect with Dominicans in their native tongue, but literally didn’t have the words for it.

• I cried on my flight from Miami to Santo Domingo, when I saw the Haitian half of Hispaniola, pitch dark in the night, and the Dominican side full of lights. I knew what that symbolized.

• I cried into my snorkel mask when I saw thriving reefs of coral for the first time.

• I cried every stinking time I watched Chasing Coral with our students and Fundemar.

But it turned out that crying was good. It was change. It was growth. 

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Four years later, I started my graduate program in Global Sustainability Science. In the summer of 2022 I completed a fellowship in sustainable tourism (specifically, destination development). And as I read about and researched all these popular destinations around the world trying to reform their tourism industries, my mind drifted back to the DR. I think about how the people I met back in 2018 created a model for what travel could be, everywhere. It could be authentic. It could hire local guides and vendors. It could be regenerative and creative and transformative. 

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To this day, I miss our brilliant community partners, merengue, tostones, and rich, dark coffee (and letting students convince me that listening to Cardi B was cultural education). 

But most of all I miss the sense of community that comes from a diverse array of curious, vulnerable travelers and hosts, sharing place with one another. As time goes on, I’m realizing how very rare that is. 

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What’s the difference between tourism and travel? I remember someone asking this question during our staff training in the DR, and again during my summer fellowship last year.

For me, it’s the difference between your relationship with a vending machine, and your relationship with your best friend  – in other words, a completely different relationship (or at least, I hope so). 

Tourism is about extraction. You shove a few crumbled bills into a vending machine, and it spits out a shiny package of sugar and preservatives. It’s sweet, but lacks nutrition – straightforward, but shallow. Moreover, it's a short and one-way street. To be a tourist is to show up, take pictures, buy things, and fail to invest your whole self into a new place. All a vending machine can take is money, and all it can give is junk.

Travel is about mutual respect, mutual exchange, and mutual support. You respect your best friend, your best friend respects you. You make her a playlist of your favorite songs for her birthday. She makes you soup using her family’s secret recipe when you’re sick. You support each other, and grow together.