When, where and How

This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at my passionate desire to be able to get back on the camino to Ítaca, or anywhere else for that matter. A desire to get back to some semblance of normalcy, to be able to move about and travel without fear and not dread the virus. Give me that jab as soon as possible, just tell me when, where and how. You can read the originally posted version in Spanish here or the English version below. También puede ver un pdf de la versión en español si se desplaza hacia abajo.

I could just barely see the fading evening light glinting off of the Caspian through the window. The table was set for guests with sweets, tea and sugar cubes that, as is custom in the region, are held under your tongue as you sip your unsweetened tea. My student and I were just about to explore the intricacies of English verbs when she noticed the time and asked if we could take a short pause. With that said, she nonchalantly rolled up her sleeve, reached over to a nearby table and grabbed an elastic band and then wrapped it tightly around her arm while holding one of the ends in her teeth. In order to somehow dissimulate my unease, I picked up my tea and practiced my tea drinking technique while I watched her pick up a needle and a vial of something and then slowly yet methodically, and with an obviously practiced manner, stick it in her arm. In a moment it was over and she put her tools back and turned to me, “Where were we?”

She noticed my surprise and apologized, “Sorry, but my doctor told me that I had to take my antibiotics regularly.” My face must have betrayed my startlement, and she went on, “That's right, in the West you normally take pills but during the USSR we usually took medicine like this and who can trust nurses these days. Like everyone else in the country, they will either want a bribe or who knows what they will shoot you up with.” It was true, the country had done a complete 180 and gone from Soviet-style communism to a particular totalitarian neofascism. Trust was in short supply, both sides had failed them. The poor Azeris like my student had suffered through two opposite yet equally dystopian regimes and could no longer trust anyone, driving them to the point where people were self-injecting themselves out of fear and distrust.

Think back to when you first heard the word Pfizer? Throw in words like Oxford and Moderna and your memory will jog back at least seven or eight month ago to when the first glimmer of hope of a vaccine appeared. Hope we might finally overcome this dreadful pandemic. Seven or eight months to prepare for one of the most complicated operations of our time. And yet, where are the vaccines? Trust in the vaccine you say? I don't know about you, but I would like it on a boat, with a goat, in the rain, on a train, in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, here or there, it in my eye, under my fingernail and even under my tongue if need be, but please make it available.

The inability to roll out this vaccine quickly and efficiently verges on criminal negligence. Partisan questions can be raised about whether the lockdowns were strict enough or if they were enacted in time, but no one, absolutely no one in their right mind can question the desperate need to get these vaccines into people as quickly as possible. If it takes McDonald's style drive-thru's like in Israel, so be it and if our leaders are too incompetent, too useless to do it, give it to me and, like my student, I'll take a chance.