Older building in Petrozavodsk
April 15, 1996 Had an impromptu Q&A session with the agents as part of the Monday morning meeting. It was very cold inside the office, at times I could see my breath. I had to have the coat on the entire day. It could not have been warmer than 45 degrees inside. After lunch I had a meeting with a woman reporter from a local cable TV station. She asked me a number of questions about insurance in the US.
Later, during my afternoon meeting with Yelena I got a call from Ben (not real name), a third CDC volunteer In Petrozavodsk. He sounded desperate, saying he didn't know where he was, the food was bad, etc. After work I visited him at his room at the Karelia Hotel. Ben was an older retired manufacturing professional, assisting a large local company. I got the impression he was a bit of a whiner.
Photo: Opera House
April 16, 1996 Talked with Irena, who is involved in training and furnishing supplies to agents. In mid-morning the cable TV reporter and a cameraman showed up. They shot some sequences of American capitalist (me) interacting with Russian insurance entrepreneurs. No sound bites though. Valery was looking for some good publicity. I was on TV a few days later, but I didn't see it.
Mariya from the St Petersburg CDC office visited in the afternoon. She was checking up on all three projects. This was the first time CDC had any volunteers in Petrovadosk, and it was not altogether an accident that there were three of us. That evening Mariya, Joe, Ben, and I had dinner at the Petrovsky Restaurant. I had the same delicious Myaso po Petrovsky, a meat stew. The presence of Ben, a right-wing zealot and a Russia basher, made for an uncomfortable evening. Although Joe and Ben were both staunch Republicans and east coast residents, they almost came to blows.
Graffiti on wall
April 17, 1996 I spent most of the day working on my comments and recommendations plus the pricing of a life insurance product. Dinner was with the same previous evenings companions, plus Mikail, the local Chamber of Commerce representative. Mikail had previously been a guide in the Caucasus region. He was very familiar with the route into Georgia that I had taken on my 1985 backpack trip to the Caucasus region.
There was some discussion of the resentment that locals have against dark-skinned Caucasus area Russians such as Mikail. Perhaps they are grouped in with Caucasus area Chechins and Georgians as being perceived as troublemakers. Ben asked Mariya and Mikail if they would want to emigrate to the US. When they replied no, Ben called them liars and proclaimed how happy he was to have been born in the US and live in the greatest country in the world. Joe and I spoke up in defense of the Russians to try to control the damage. I think all of us plus the waiter would have loved to have strangled Ben by the end of the evening.