The Adonia docked at Amber Cove, Carnival's $80 million private port.
A group of tourists on one of Fathom's buses, en route to a volunteer activity
A guide leads volunteers in a cheer at the Wine to Water ceramics factory
"In just five years, Fathom travelers could provide 15,000 homes with water filters and reduce student absenteeism due to sickness by 35 percent," Fathom claims.When the bus arrives at the ceramics factory, the volunteers are split into four groups and set to work. Taylor, her mom, and Norgren put on breathing masks and start sifting dried clay through a large sieve. Yellow dust fills the air and sticks to their clothes. "It's a great look," jokes Taylor, who tries out a word or two of Spanish on the Dominican craftsmen, to little effect."I don't care what any anybody says," Bryant Vega told me. "I know I made a difference. This guy has a floor in his fucking house.
Taylor Schear (front left), Julie Schear (front right), and other volunteers in the initial stages of making ceramic water filters, sifting dry clay through a sieve
The pool at Amber Cove
Ross Trumble molds clay and sawdust for a ceramic filter.
Nicasio explained to me that their community first began drinking purified water 20 years ago, as botellones became readily available and the cost of purified water dropped. He said nearly everyone he knows in Los Llanos drinks clean water, and he didn't mention expense as an issue. (When I spoke to him a few months later, he told me that, because of the W2W filter, he had stopped buying bottled water, though he didn't say whether it was saving him much money). I was glad to see that Nicasio had such ready access to clean water. But I wondered whether the volunteers I had accompanied realized that they were bringing clean water to people who already had it, knew how to get it, and could afford it.Leaving Los Llanos, I headed on to Puerto Plata to follow up with some of the Dominicans who'd been tutored in English the week before. Emelda Garcia, a quiet, kind woman who owned the house where I had met the two Dominican teenagers, invited me inside. I asked her whether she learns more English during the tutoring sessions with the Fathom volunteers than she does on the off-weeks when the boat isn't here—when young Dominican instructors tutor her instead. "We learn more with the muchachos, of course," she said, referring to the paid instructors. "Any question you can ask them, they know the answer." Fathom employees pointed out to me that, without the travelers' money, this tutoring wouldn't happen. But that seemed to imply that travelers could do even more good if they skipped the cruise altogether and sent their money straight to Entrena's English tutors instead."I think the tourist has a responsibility to think, Is this company a company that I want to do business with?" Steven Baines told me.
A volunteer passes a bucket of cement.
A volunteer, with the help of a RePapel employee, takes paper pulp out of a sieve.
Rows of ceramic filters
Volunteers shredding paper by hand
Volunteers who have signed up to build concrete floors mixing water, cement, and sand
The entrance to a gift shop at Amber Cove