Hi again @golden6, I am glad you and Batman's Daughter got the vaccine when you did because now you will be protected and, like you say, there will be boosters too. As for that gold phenomenon you mentioned, that is very interesting and I had not noticed that but will be watching that closely now. Online is not the best place for my story but I would have no issues telling you in person. You would need some alcohol and eventually tell me to shut up, because as a few on this forum who know me personally, I talk too much. But I will say I developed a weird accent for a while. I did pass through the posher overnight stops, but mostly spent time in off-the-path areas where you must be careful of misunderstandings. It's sort of like being a Yankee in Paris: be genuinely humble from the moment you get off the plane, and they might not pretend they can't understand your third rate pronunciation. My time there was not without risk and I'm grateful that the people I went with are ok. Mostly I have good memories and love those I met. The only time I see the places now is on the nightly news.
Being naïve and ignorant enough to be myself worked out well, too. The experience confirmed the advice given me by someone with a truly interesting stories to tell: that people everywhere generally want the same things, and are often able to secure those things over time on a basically even playing field. Inequity applies especially to girls and women who take the brunt of things almost everywhere I've lived. Their physical and mental scars - I remembered them clearly - led to a deep personal contempt for inaction and noninterventionist policy, cocooned as it is in our apathetic and sterile western sensibilities. We twist things further with our cowardice and willingness to confuse cause and effect.
I digress but one more thing. The path to living without constant fear is long, complicated, prone to exploitation and fraught with great suffering. But as a friend from Malaysia in Australia once told me: "Sometimes there has to be sadness before there is gladness". Goodness knows that has been a self-evident theme throughout. We have it much easier than we realize, and I had a culture shock when I set foot on western soil. Dangerous bugs aside, when I use Google Earth to zoom into the roads I lived on, I actually get homesick for them and do intend to go back some day.
