Dominican immersion culturally enriching, completely exhausting.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

`How did I get here?" I wondered to myself, while the words of the Dominican national anthem echoed through my head for, what seemed like, the 117th time.

"Quisqueyanos valientes, alcemos ..."

We were in a hotel banquet room in the capital city of Santo Domingo, dining on fried plantains and other steam-table Dominican fare, and playing a role that had become quite familiar to us.

We were the honored guests of the local Rotarians.

Our hosts segued into another now-familiar tune, the Dominican Rotary anthem, and I flashed back on what had been a whirlwind trip for the four members of our group.

A month ago, I could have scarcely picked out the Dominican Republic on a map, but after a month in the country, the rhythms of the place had infected me - in a good way. I had picked up some Spanish - even learned some Dominican slang - developed a taste for the savory food and learned how to stumble my way through a merengue song. We played dominoes with 80-year-old men, got our hair cut by an eccentric roller-skating barber and drank the national beer, which is called Presidente and is served as cold as they can get it.

We were there on a trip for young professionals from the Northwest sponsored by Rotary International. Only one person in our group, our leader, was a member of the business-service organization, which is now active in 166 countries and well known around the world for its efforts to eradicate polio.

In addition to introducing us to Rotary, the goal of our monthlong journey was to look for future Rotary projects and spread goodwill.

At each stop, we pumped the flesh, observed local service projects, and gave a presentation to a local Rotary club in which we talked a lot about ourselves and extolled the virtues of Oregon rain.

We showed slides of big trees and shared snapshots of our pets (`Why no children?" our hosts wondered) and our group leader talked about her favorite charity project, the Great Rotary Duck Race.

While we were learning valuable lessons such as how to say rubber ducks in Spanish (we settled on `patos plasticos') a team of young Dominican professionals was in Oregon making its own cultural discoveries: The women in the group learned that visiting a beauty salon several times a week is not economically feasible in this country and one of the men realized that hissing to catch a waiter's attention is not such a good idea here.

I can only assume the Dominican Rotary team had an experience that was similar to ours, which is to say a trip that was culturally enriching, personally enlightening and, at times, completely exhausting.

It was total immersion travel, unlike anything I had ever done before. We were up early, to bed late and our days were almost entirely scheduled. We went to Rotary meetings on an almost daily basis, walked countless neighborhoods, toured schools, tromped through rest homes and visited factories and farms throughout the island.

We saw the best and worst of what the country had to offer. We stayed in virtual palaces, lived in dumps, visited rich tourist resorts and walked through barrios where raw sewage ran in the streets. It was not unlike being a newspaper reporter, only in this case, I wasn't writing any stories and my work day never ended.

But it wasn't just the things we saw - it was the people we met who made our trip what it was.

If you can imagine visiting 1,000 distant relatives, all of whom want a piece of you, you'll have some idea of what our trip was like. Everyone wanted us to check out the view, try the food, learn a new word, see what the problem was, understand this or that about their country.

Instead of feeling like tourists, we felt like members of some big Dominican family roaming the country in search of long-lost second cousins, great aunts and godfathers.

It was a treat to be in such a privileged position. It was also, at times, overwhelming to be pushed and pulled in so many different directions. There were moments when each of us thought we might blow a gasket if we had to tour another brick factory, visit another farm or stand up and give another slide-show presentation.

Even so, we never forgot just how lucky we were to be sitting in the front car of the roller coaster with our own personal tour guides right there alongside us.

Our guides - the Joses, the Mercedes, the Manuels, Josefinas and the dozens of Rafaels - are the ones who helped put things into perspective for us. They are the ones who made sense of the blur of sights, sounds, scents and flavors that passed before us during the longest (or was it shortest) 30 days of my life. They are the ones I will remember long after I've forgotten how to say rubber duck in Spanish and have misplaced the lyrics to the Dominican national anthem.

CAPTION(S):

Lewis Taylor stayed with a number of hosts, including Haydee Rondon of Santo Domingo, during his trip to the Dominican Republic. Lewis Taylor / The Register-Guard