Three Decades

October 1st, 1991. A little over 30 years ago i arrived in Estonia. As i now think about it, this important anniversary almost passed without me noticing, until i reminded about it yesterday. Thought i'd reflect a bit here, let's see how much i can fit into a nutshell. I've written large parts of my journey for limited audiences before, perhaps this will be the first time I openly blog some experiences which i've kept relatively private in the past. Of course, i'll do my best to stay as objective as possible. So i arrived in the new wild east, as Estonia had just become free from Soviet rule less than 40 days earlier. Russian border guards still at the port of entry gazed with uncertainty at the ink stamped visa in my Canadian passport, issued a few weeks earlier by the Estonian consolate in Toronto. My decision to come to Estonia was not made overnight. It was something that had brewed within my heart for over 4 years, though i could never bring my mind around to the concept of living in a country still under the rule of the Soviet Union. That all changed on August 20th 1991, as during the Soviet coup, Estonia, followed by several other occupied countries, declared independence. At that moment, i knew without a shadow of doubt my place was in Estonia. Deeply moved by more than just a sense of patriotism, i came to not only explore, but invest the prime years of my life to do my small part in rebuilding the land of my forefathers. It was something i considered to be a divine calling, to bring hope to a generation of young people, as well as finding and/or creating economic value though strategic partnerships and investments. My first month in Estonia was an eyeopener on many fronts. A basically entered a country which was stuck in time, technologically and industrially i'd estimate to be 1950's or 1960's at best. I visited several companies -all state owned at the time, to see if there might be an opportunity for developing exports or joint venture possibilites with the limited business contacts i had in the west. Most Estonian companies expressed eager willingness to find business partners in the west, however the reciprical was quite difficult to find. Most of my business contacts smiled and some even applauded my "patriotic efforts", but none had interest in taking any business risk in such an unstable business and political environment. As i crossed Estonia from one corner to another, i sensed both hope and dispair. With the collapse of the Soviet financial system and a crumbling currency, most Estonians' monthly wages were barely what i'd spend on an average dinner date in Canada. I could easily survive here on $1/day and have plenty to spare, though for locals, spiraling inflation was destroying their savings, as well as making it almost impossible to make ends meet. As it was the wild wild east, i could see some degree of lawlessness in the country, though i never personally sensed any immediate danger, even though i stuck out like a sore western thumb. The most vulnerable i felt was when i exchanged $100US at the post office (a place where one could find currency exchangers with various degrees of credibility), only to be swindled out of all but $1. Just one of the many early cautionary lessons i learned early on. My brother in law's brother had just moved to Estonia about three months earlier, as a missionary. I spent the first weeks with his family. A few moments remain vividly embedded in my memory, such as filling up his imported Chevy van with close to 100 litres of diesel fuel, and paying the approximate equivilent of $1 in total, while locals qued up with their Ladas and Moscvitches for gasoline which was for them quite expensive, and in extreemly short supply. Another oddity i observed, was my relative's neighbour, who would drop off free diesel fuel after each of his work shifts. As it turned out, his pay was based on the amount of fuel he used, apparently a soviet measure of productivity. So rather than dumping fuel -as many of his fellow crane operators did, he gladly shared it with his newfound missionary friend (who then ackquired suitable cisterns to store the fuel on his rental property). Though i seriously questioned the ethics of the transaction, the alternative presented was countless times worse to the environment of our freshly liberated homeland. My first weeks in Estonia did not pass without a car accident. Driving habits were what most westerners would consider extreem. Lane splitting, passing into oncoming traffic seemed to be the norm. Pedestrians were considered a nuisance, hardly ever given the right of way. One day i borrowed my relative's Volkswagen Jetta to travel with a freind to Narva. In the small town of Kohtla Nõmme, we were involved in a relatively low speed head-on collision. My friend was in the driver's seat, i as a passenger ended up with my head smashing the windshield, which knocked out for possibly three to five seconds. Fortunatly there happened to be a nurse in the car behind us, who cleaned me up and bandaged my forehead. The police (still called "miilits") took an hour to show up, with an ambulance showing up another hour later. I don't want to think of what might have happened if the accident would have been worse. The poor guy that hit us with his Lada was in deathly dispair, as he realized he could never afford to pay for the damage he caused to a western car (no insurance in Estonia at this time). "Why couldn't I have hit a Russian car!" he exclaimed. We tried to calm him with little avail. I returned to Canada for Christmas, shipped a diesl VW along with some of my belongings over in February 1992, and then returned with a vision and goal to make some kind of positive impact on Estonian youth, as well as find business development and job creation opportunities. However great this adventure was for em, doors of opportunity did not open quite as i had expected. To fund my adventure, i decided to import car alarm systems as my first venture. Trying stay low key in a maffia rampant environment made the business quite challenging. Fear somehow outweighed any ideas of widely marketing my products. As a result, the business was not viable within the framework of what i considered secure. However, i inadventanty discovered the car import business. Having sold my imported car for a 400% profit, i decided to take my profits and import three more, somehow remaining under the local maffia's radar. Eventually i ended up importing multiple vehicles each year, even new vehicles at times, though margins were not as attractive after a few years. Though i was sustaining myself, i was missing my core vision and goal of business development and job creation. During this time i had also opened my home up for a few church youth to meet regularly, which linked in with the vision i had for reaching troubled youth. It started off as a small group of us, about a dozen youth in the summer of '93, but quickly outgrew my home. By 1994, there was 50-70 of us meeting in an old wooden Kadriorg cafe we affectionaly named the "Green Frog". The exponential growth of the group was overwhelming, and being the "wild east" i had a tough time finding sufficent spiritual and emotional resources to support such a quickly growing group. I can't say "God didn't provide", we had a core group 3-4 who led our youth activities as we supported one another, and as ill-equipped as we were, for over three years we met weekly for bible studies, prayer, nature outings, and simple fun fellowship. Though several lifelong friendships developed, the group had in my opinion grown too big to develop the types of relationships which could tuly reach the core of all these kids' hearts. Having simple fun fellowship -as valuable as it may be, was not at the core of my vision. Coming from a troubled family background myself, having wandered countless nights on the streets of Toronto as a teen and never finding adequate support from local church or social programs, my heart was more focused on reaching out to Estonian youth struggling with similar issues. Finding little support or understanding within the church (which in my opinion was more preoccupied with growing numbers than quality relationships), my heart was torn between continuing to manage a numerically growing youth group -for which i was countless times patted on the back, or to follow my heart's cry. As the pastor never comprehended my heart's cry, and quite frankly never found time to get to know the underlying passion within me, he opted to disconnect and find a "less troublesome" leader for the youth group -perhaps one he felt didn't require as much "support". Most of the kid's didn't understand why i "quit" the youth group, i didn't even expose the reasons why to the special gal in my life at the time, in every reply I simply quoted Ecclesiastes, stating there is a time for everything under the sun. In restrospect, i should have been more open regarding the circumstances surrounding my departure. People talk, draw conclusions from other's actions and behaviour, which are oftentimes far removed from the truth. Rumors, which eventually reached back to me, stated i left youth work to focus on my career as export manager for a small automotive textile supplier. Though i had started working for the company a couple of years before i "quit the youth group", and my workload was growing rapidly, my passion to help and support troubled youth never subsided. I met Ron, a YFC (Youth for Christ non-profit organasation) missionary in 1994. He was organizing a trip for church youth leaders to receive comprehensive training in Poland. I was asked to select a handful of youth with potentual leadership qualities from our church, for the trip which took place January 1995 (none of whom the pastor chose to lead the youth group after i "quit" in '96). The week long trip was both educating and quite an adventure, though personally somewhat difficult as i internally pondered and wrestled with several issues in my heart. Over the following months i shared both my vision and frustrations with Ron, from which grew an invitation to realize my vision though his organization. For years i had envisioned a youth center, where kids could come and hang out without any restrictions, pressure, or prejudged biases being imposed upon them (which i experienced searching for help during my teen years). Those in need would find someone with true empathy who can support and assist in resolving their deep crisis'. I envisioned linking with existing church and social programs which can assist kids coming from unstable or violent homes, kids strugling with sunstance abuse, even giving hope to pregnant teens, directing each of them to places where they could find the best support for their circumstances. Remembering the paralizing fear i felt searching for help as a teen, the center would become a place where young people's fear barriers would be broken, a stepping stone per se to both assistive counseling and programs, as well as to the supportive churches. After a 7 month long delay (the contractor failed to complete the facility within the agreed two months, draining most of our financial resources), we opened "Kitsas Tee" ("The Narrow Road") on Lai tn 7 ("Wide Street 7") in 1997. Both the name of the youth center and the address fit well with a key verse behind my vision, Matthew 7:13-14. Indeed narrow is the path that leads to life -and it can be tough to find that path without guidance and help, while easy and wide is the path that leads to destruction. Part of the plan was to be fully self supportive with a revenue producing cafe, which unfortunately never came to fruition. Funds pledged for building out the kitchen were largely lost to paying rent on an incompleted facility due to construction delay. It eventually became clear that the contractor, who was also a YFC board member, gave promises to which he lacked the resources to timely complete. And though i favored an outside contractor, promises of completing the facility for a significant discount swayed the board's decision in his favor. Time is money they say, and in this case it was devistatingly true, as the time lost in constructoin critically wounded us financially, from which we never recovered. As the kitchen was never completed, prepackaged snacks and drinks was all we could offer at the youth center during its three and a half years of existance. Nonetheless, it became a popular place for Estonian youth to hang out, at least over the first couple of years. We organized events and concerts in the youth center, games along with a pool table for kids to enjoy, along with bible studies and fellowship/support groups. Unfortunatly we didn't succeed in find churches or other organizations grasping the opportunity or fully embracing the vision we had. Instead we heard complaints of the youth center "stealing" church youth, which absolutely was never our intention. Church politics are funny sometimes, what should be a place of acceptance and grace all too often becomes a place of turf battles. Interestingly, the youth center suddenly became attractive turf for the same pastor who opted to disconnect from me a year earlier. After opening the youth center, he invited me back to assist alongside the new youth leader who was struggling, even suggested i bring the youth center under his church's umbrella. My gut churned, as i responded as gracefully as i could in the moment, declining his offer while suggesting he instead dedicate more time mentoring and supporting his new youth leader. Our relationship remained amicable in later years, though i understood our perspective on difficult life issues remained quite far apart. And it was perfectly understandable, as with his stable family background he in no way could he conceive what it means to search for a place of refuge from a unstable home. While several more positive relationships developed with other curches and non-profits, the financial stress we were under from the start undermined efforts to expand or develop anything more impactful with the youth center. As we lacked sufficient resources, i remained deeply involved in the youth center's day to day activities, all alongside my full time job -which eventually took it's toll. Up to that point, i did not really comprehend what burn-out is, and perhaps didn't truly comprehend what had hit me for a few years yet. As my life became consumed by both my career as well as the youth center, i felt it was time to find another leader for the center, which we did. The new leader was certainly capable, however he did bring a change to the number and type of youth visiting to the center. Somehow we were no longer reaching the demographic we had, nor were we offering the types of activities or environment which attracted as many youth. And in all fairness, more events and activites were being offered elsewhere, so the scarcity of places youth could go had diminished. In 2001, the youth center shut down, as it wasn't financially sustainable, nor fulfilling the vision i had initially cast. Being also an export manager for a growing automotive supplier consumed much of my energy and work capacity, as our business quickly expanded in Western Europe, with contracts to supply automakers from Daimler-Benz to JLR. My export department grew as we hired new project managers as multiple new projects came online, more than i could initially handle. Conflicts which developed within upper management made my job all the more difficult, where in addition to managing multiple projects, i became a facilitor for resolving internal disputes. During my tenure, i learned much about the Estonian psyche. Estonians almost never admit they have made a mistake, most often find a scapegoat, cover up, or brush mishaps under the carpet. I remember when a key British client sent us a special fibre for production of a new fabric for testing, but our production staff inadventently mixed the batch in with our regular production and it was lost. Without the special fibre avaiable for producing the new fabric, our CEO called a meeting to develop a cover-up plan, starting with our own material substitution to every excuse from a fire loss to lost in transit was thrown on the table. In principle i refused to play along with any cover-up, and the meeting ended in a stalemate as our CEO was convinced we would lose the lucrative contract if our screw-up came to light. To make a long story short, the CEO eventually allowed me to tell the truth to our business partner, who responded with a chuckle "Shit happens to the best of us -we'll send you another batch!" Apologies are not a strong suit with Estonians, neither in giving, far less receiving. I remember stepping out of line with my boss, undermining the CEO's authority during an important business meeting. Regardless of the fact that my view turned out to be the correct one, i sensed i needed to apologize for the uncomfortable positition i placed my boss in amongst colleagues. I stepped into te CEO's office, apologized for stepping out of line during the meeting -you would have thought my boss had been caught in an embarrasing act. The guy did not know how to accept an apology gracefully, he without any eye contact expressed his discomfort with fidgity movements, said "no problem" while motioning me to leave. Don't get me wrong, I loved my job and generally got along well with my colleagues. I loved the amazing opportunities my position presented to develop new markets and products, while growing employment opprtunities for my fellow Estonians -all of which clicked in with my vision and passion. Tough negotiations with clients and partners was all a part of normal business, but endless internal disputes and stupid "negotiations" with my own colleagues to get things done eventually took its toll. After five and half years, i had had enough. My colleagues questioned my decision to leave, as they tried to convince me to stay. Again, i remained silent on the real reasons for leaving. My employment experience presented me with a powerful springboard towards a dream career in the automotive industry (i had even been courted by a small automaker and a couple of suppliers). However, i sensed i first needed to rest and recover from the toll my job and the youth center had taken on me before i'd have the capacity to move on. And despite opportunities, i discounted any thought of moving away from Estonia, as my calling and vision remained integraly tied to my homeland. So i took a year off, bought my dream BMW motorcycle and toured northern Europe. I was still trying to regain direction, while my mind pondered all kinds of business ideas and possibilities. For years i had a passion for the aviation industry -so i decided to follow that passion. I started up an air charter brokerage company -my first registered business venture in Estonia. The second decade... to be continued...