On the road again

I fly to the States in a few days, and I gotta say, I’m feeling pretty weird about it.

I mean, I know it’s a good thing to do: we’ll see family for the first time since late 2019. And it’s a smart thing to do: we have an appointment to get our first COVID-19 jab within hours of landing. Which still seems surreal, even impossible, given the glacial pace of vaccination here in South Africa.

We’re officially in our third wave, and issues with AstraZeneca (effectiveness against our Beta variant), and Johnson & Johnson (clotting), plus quality control problems at a Baltimore manufacturer have all plagued SA’s roll out. But it’s also a supply issue. Wealthier nations’ direct deals with manufacturers left the global Covax scheme (on which less wealthy countries rely) struggling to obtain doses.

According to a BBC report, “in Africa, only about two doses of vaccine have been administered per 100 people, compared with an average of 68 doses per 100 in high-income countries. And less than 1% of Africa's population has been fully vaccinated.”

All this while Americans are being offered joints, baseball tickets and cash to convince them to get the jab.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that I have mixed feelings about the trip. Trepidation about moving around in a place without a mask mandate and a vocal anti-mask/anti-vax cohort. Anxiety about the 20+ hours of plane travel and transit to get there. But mostly a mix of guilty gratitude: why do I get to spirit back to a country that snapped up far more doses than it needs, while most of my friends here won’t see a jab before November, if they’re lucky?

Why do I get to go while others have to stay?

One of the many strange things about spending over half my life outside the U.S. as a quasi-nomadic immigrant is that I’ve always had the option to leave. Togo, Kenya, DR Congo, Mexico - I could have abandoned ship and fled back to the U.S any time I wanted to. I don’t often think of it in those terms, but it’s true.

At the beginning of the pandemic, people asked Chad and I if we planned to return to the States. For many reasons, we never seriously considered it. Our home, for now, is here. Our dog and our flat and the little life we’ve managed to carve out in a few short years.

But we had the freedom to make that decision for ourselves. We had options to consider, at the same time so many people were wondering when they would eat next or how they would pay their rent. That was true before the pandemic, it will be true after: either way, it’s wildly unfair.

The fact that I will board a plane bound for Newark the day after tomorrow feels like the height of my own undeserved, life-long advantage. It’s infuriating, nonsensical and so very sad.