I once had a secretary named Carmen — one of the sweetest, most patient, most helpful people you could ever meet. Always smiling, always willing to help. But she had a… let’s say… very unique relationship with facts.
One day, I called her during my lunch break.
“Carmen, is the meeting room booked for this afternoon?”
She put me on hold, shuffled through some papers, and came back proudly.
“Yes, Doctor, it’s reserved for exactly the time you want.”
“Great,” I said. “And what meeting is scheduled then?”
“Oh, it’s a meeting with the Soviet Union.”
I almost dropped my fork. “The Soviet Union? Carmen, you do know that… well… it doesn’t exist anymore, right?”
There was silence. Then she said, confidently, “No, no, it’s written right here.”
A few seconds later she burst out laughing.
“Oh wait! I read it wrong. It’s the European Union. My mistake.”
Weeks later, I asked her to call the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, specifically a division called DIBAS — Brazil-India-South Africa Dialogue.
Time passed. Then she called me back, sounding a bit wounded.
“Doctor, they say there’s no such division… and honestly, they weren’t very nice to me.”
That’s when I discovered she’d asked for the “Division of BIBAS.”
For the uninitiated, “bibas” is… well… Brazilian slang for gay men.
I can only imagine the conversation on the other end of the line.
And then there was the time she insisted that, decades ago, the Ministry of Agriculture had been called the Ministry of Hunting and Fishing. I tried to explain it was just the name of an old social club, but she wasn’t having it.
Her dream was always to work at the Presidency. And she actually made it!
Curiously, a few months after she got there, the President faced impeachment.
Now, I’m not saying the two events were related… but let’s just say that, in diplomacy, I’ve learned never to completely rule out a coincidence.