The week before I left for Helsinki I received an invitation from the Canadian Embassy to attend a NATO event and volunteer for them. I was told to meet them on Monday for a meeting and that the ambassador would be there. The event was to be held on the Friday in Freedom Square and was going to be all day. I jumped at the opportunity thinking that it would be an invaluable experience that me and my politicized self would benefit from. I wasn't too far off actually, but of course, with me doing anything involves a number of potentially embarrassing hiccups.
On Monday I dutifully walked over to the Canadian embassy after class for the meeting. The e-mail I received said that the ambassador would be there but failed to mention a number of important things. It gave me the impression that there would be a lot of people and that I could just sit in the back maybe and pretend not to be there. Or maybe I misread the e-mail in lieu of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking aside, the facts were really rather different. This is how it unfolded: I walked in, one of the people working in the embassy said the ambassador wasn't ready yet so I sat down. About ten minutes later I was ushered into an adjoining room and told to pick a place to sit. As I entered, I was staring the ambassador full in the face and when I sat down.... he sat beside me. Now, I know that despite being a relative VIP in the Baltic region, that this man was just a person, but I hadn't blown my hair dry that morning, was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and was sweating slightly from walking up the hill. Bahh!!
There turned out to be only four people attending the meeting which was a briefing meeting on the war in Afghanistan which is what we'd be focusing on for the NATO exhibit. Thank you political science degree!!!! Thank you Jeff MacLeod for forcing me to learn stuff!! Without that prior knowledge, I would have been up a creek without a paddle (to be colloquial). As it was, my voice seemed to have gone into hiding somewhere under my lower intestine, and my sweat glands had decided I was nervous and to over produce for me. Dear body, I hate you. Love Noelle.
An hour in I managed to hit my stride. I knew this information, I'd covered it before. The ambassador was friendly and genial and spoke like a career politician and I'd dealt with people like that before. Half way through, he asked what I was studying and when I said political science, he just chuckled and mumbled that I probably already knew this stuff. I said sure, but not the statistics. When he asked my opinion, I had one, when he asked where I was from, he said he'd been there. So I guess, all in all, it went well. I'm not delusional, I know I was a blip on his radar screen for all of two hours but as the only other Canadian in the room, I had wanted to make an impression. I don't really know that I did. He was probably thinking, "This girl looks awfully uncomfortable." which I was. Totally.
Toward the end of our conversation, we got to talking about the political system in Tallinn. I mentioned that I thought their electoral system was better than ours despite the democratic deficit this part of the world is currently experiencing. The office manager, who was Estonian like all of the others who work in the embassy, said something that I hadn't thought of since being here and I want to share it with you even if you aren't interested. She said that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, things have been changing so fast for Estonians that they are simply exhausted from thinking about their political and economic situation. They don't have a history of consistently being concerned with upcoming elections, or a strong correlation between voting and democracy as a part of life. So, similar to Canadians, they simply don't bother to vote, just for very different reasons. I still think it's amazing that despite this, they have one of the top five democracies in the world and are one of the most forward-thinking nations.
On the walk home, I was laughing to myself and at myself for that afternoon. How? How did I get here, have coffee and a chat about NATO with an ambassador? How am I representing Canada's position in NATO to the Estonian public on Friday? What is going on?????
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