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Brief Session


On Thursday, Zuzana and I went to see a panel discussion on ‘volunteering culture’, held at the very swanky ‘International Exhibition Business Centre’ (is it just me or do those words not go together?) The panel consisted of representatives from the ministries of culture, tourism, some volunteering groups, and an Orthodox priest(?!?)
The ‘Brief Session’ (because that’s totally a legit description of an event) was aimed at young people in volunteering. The centre was massive, like the inside of the Death Star. We followed signs for the ‘Brief Session’, and ended up in a big lecture theatre filled with military scouts and some people wearing suits.
The idea was to encourage young people to help with volunteering. It was part of a bigger ‘patriotism festival’…
…
Yep.

The representative from the Ministry of Tourism, while trying to show how important volunteering was for the tourism industry, essentially said that ‘foreigners drop a lot of rubbish in our beautiful national parks’, and young volunteers are needed to pick it all up. Now I’m no Russian young volunteer, but I don’t think I’d react well if someone told me my most useful contribution was picking up other people’s trash. Apparently there are people who do that though, so good on them.

The most confusing address was by the priest. I have to say, he was a pretty great speaker, but I’m just not sure why he was there. He pretty quickly veered off towards the patriotism thing, and then sort of collided with it and seemed unable to disentangle himself. The rest of the speech became an exercise in ‘how many times can you say “great nation” in one sentence?’ There were a couple of things which, when you thought about them, probably had no meaning. ‘We are building the moral era with you’, and ‘we are launching a project to protect the great Russian soul’. He looked fly with his beard and his bling though.

At the end, some official minister for something or other came into the room, followed by four men in black suits, who quickly sat down in different parts of the room. He was handed a mic, and said… well I don’t actually know what he said, because he spoke too quietly. I imagine it was something to the tune of ‘wassup homies thanks for coming along to support this brief session about something which someone organised, peace out.’ We’ll never know. After about thirty seconds of him moving his lips but not producing sound, his lips stopped moving. The crowd seemed confused, we didn’t know whether he’d finished or was just taking a break. Someone started clapping and then stopped abruptly. Then there were ten more seconds of silence. And then everyone clapped.

Zuzana and I walked home across Tatishev Island. ‘How much of that did you understand?’ I asked her.
‘In terms of words, I understood quite a lot.’ She replied. ‘I’m just not sure what it actually meant.’

The view across the Yenisei on the walk home

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