March 2007 - Posts
By Ali Arouzi, NBC News Producer
It’s been a week since the 15 British sailors and marines were seized by Iran and not much has been resolved. The British still insist that their personal were in Iraqi waters when they were detained, and the Iranians are still arguing to the contrary.
The British have released GPS data that they say shows that they did not violate Iranian waters, but Tehran has video footage and charts it says shows that the British sailors were in Iranian waters when they were seized.
Despite the diplomatic back and forth, it has only been over the last couple of days that there has been any kind of noticeable reaction to the incident in the Iranian media and on the streets of Tehran. Iran been in the midst of a holiday period – celebrating the Persian New Year – so a lot of people have been out of town, and most of the newspapers have not been printing over the holidays.
It was only earlier this week that I asked my barber, Reza Amini, what he though about the arrest of the sailors and he answered, "Fifteen British sailors have been arrest in Iran? Oh my God, does this mean trouble?"
Now everybody is talking about it.
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By NBC News local journalist in Baghdad*
Social constraints in Iraq prevent a lot of women from earning money – the men put food on the table by going out to work while women take care of children and the home. But by leaving the house, men are often more exposed to the dangers of car bombs, kidnappings and assassinations. As a result, most of the victims of violence in Iraq are men – leaving the women to dress in black and mourn them.
According to Iraqi tradition, women must dress in black for at least one year of mourning after the loss of a husband, father, mother, or any other family member or relative.
A source in the Iraqi Ministry of Women’s Affairs told me recently that because of the various wars since 1980 – the Iran-Iraq war that lasted from 1980 to 1988, the first Gulf War in 1990, and the U.S. invasion in 2003 and its aftermath – that there are approximately three million Iraqi widows and the numbers are increasing.
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By Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News Producer in Buner, and Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer in Islamabad
"We were told to fight against Israel, America and non-Muslims," said Muhammed Bakhtiar, 17, explaining why he wanted to become a suicide bomber. "We are so unhappy with our lives here. We have nothing," he said.
Last month, Bakhtiar and his school friend, Miraj Ahmad, also 17, left their home, families, and boarding school in Buner, a district of the Malakand Division of the Northwest Frontier Province. Their destination was the Muridke madrassa right outside of Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The madrassa or religious school is run by the Jama’at-ud-Da’awah, the charity linked to the outlawed terrorist organization, Lashkar e Taiba. And Lashkar e Taiba has links to al-Qaida.
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| NBC News |
| Miraj Ahmad, left, and Muhammed Bakhtiar were recruited for jihad. |
The grounds of this madrassa looks much like the campus of any exclusive boys boarding school – except for the bearded armed guards sporting Kalashnikovs checking all those who come and go. There is a cricket field, swimming pool, all sorts of sport activities, and horses too. In addition to religious instruction, the school offers computer sciences, engineering and pre-med classes for students ranging in age from six to 17.
It also offers jihad.
"We read about jihad in books and wanted to join," said Ahmad. "We wanted to go to the Muridke madrassa so we would have a better life in the hereafter."
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Tel Aviv Bureau Chief
Recently -- and for the first time -- I have been reading survivors’ accounts of the Holocaust.
Turns out I am not alone in being delayed in addressing the subject.
I was surprised, for instance, to find that Primo Levi’s first account of Auschwitz was only widely published a full 13 years after his liberation. (And it took the medical report he co-authored for the Russian liberators sixty years to be released to the public.)
Meanwhile, Eli Wiesel -- who like Levi was used as a slave in the Buna-Werke, a subcamp of Auschwitz -- couldn’t write about it for 10 years, and even then he had to be persuaded to do so. And then it took him several years to find a publisher for his first book, "Night," a memoir about his experiences that was published in 1956.
So why did it take decades for me to read Wiesel and Levi's testimonies? Maybe because of the pain passed on by my parents, whose entire families disappeared in smoke in those same extermination camps, I couldn’t face such open wounds, even dried by time.
Two things happened this week that picked off the scab.
First was when I joined a roomful of happy Holocaust survivors eating cake, drinking coffee and dancing at the new Café Europa near Tel Aviv. The goal of the café is to create a place for Holocaust survivors to meet and share their common experiences.
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By Tom Aspell, NBC News Correspondent
By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News Producer
During my recent hunt for a new apartment in Moscow’s astronomically-priced real estate market, I came across postings like this one all the time.
“2 room apt. Newly refurbished. All appliances, high-speed internet, quiet courtyard. Central Asians need not apply.” (Or, “No Tajiks.” “No Georgians, No Uzbeks, No one from the Caucasus, Slavic family only, etc.”)
But what actually surprised me was the conversation I had with an agent over the phone:
“What nationality are you?” she asked.
“American.”
“No, no. Not your citizenship – what is your nationality? You know, the landlords will want to know.”
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By Ann Curry, NBC News Correspondent & Anchor
The little girl, maybe 6 years old, was shoeless in the scorching sand. I looked closely at her feet, struck by how old they appeared, wrinkled and calloused gray, and it occurred to me, she’s probably never worn a pair of shoes.
I saw her near Nyala, in Sudan’s Darfur region, in a camp for displaced people called al-Salam, Arabic for peace, it is a place surrounded by war
Now, 700 camps like this one dot Darfur, and the majority of the people in them are children. Glimpsing a brand new baby in one camp, when the wind caught the fabric of her mother’s headdress, I wondered how one keeps a child alive in this hell.
Click here to read the rest of Ann Curry's blog in The Daily Nightly about the children of Darfur.
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
Four hours at a birthday party decorated with Teletubby images and littered with Teletubby aerials, and I’ve become a 3-year-old again.
My camera crew and I have been passing the time by munching on Cadbury chocolate mini-eggs and sucking down radioactive green-colored fruit punch, waiting for the big moment – when the Teletubbies appear on a stage here to be presented with passports.*
(*Apologies to our serious-minded readers: As one colleague put it to me, it’s hardly the stuff of "weighty geopolitical issues of our day," like the war in Iraq or the environment, but maybe we could all use a bit of levity now and then.)
Anyway, this is groundbreaking. Really.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Teletubbies hold onto their new passports and Dipsy gets a breath of fresh air while preparing for a photo-op. |
The birthday party is for Tinky Winky (the purple one), Dipsy (green), Laa-Laa (yellow), and Po (red), who are marking their 10th year anniversary as the Teletubbies.
And to celebrate the occasion, the colorful quartet is setting foot for the first time outside their studios (aka Teletubbyland) in Stratford-upon-Avon. They’re going far, too.
This weekend they will fly to New York, where – also for the first time – the performers will be unmasked and introduced on the TODAY show next Wednesday.
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By Jeff Riggins, NBC News Cameraman
News in Israel is never that far away from home -- especially since it is, in fact, a very small country.
Sitting at my home computer Tuesday morning, I was mildly annoyed by the sounds of helicopters flying around. I say mildly annoyed because I hear Blackhawk and Apache helicopters all day long as they fly up and down the coast on their daily missions. But this was different, the helicopters were right over the house, or so it seemed.
Then I heard the sound of bullhorns admonishing people to stay back and to stay in their cars. That's when I jumped up grabbed my cameras and took off out the door.
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By Michelle Kosinski, NBC News correspondent
It's past high noon in the center of Nassau, the well-worn Bahamian capital. A buzz is growing again around the old pink courthouse newly scrubbed to be shiny clean last week.
Again, dozens of tourists in pastels and clutching cameras have the place covered.
Why did they come here, and skip that unbelievably gorgeous beach? Two smiling spring breakers from Ohio say they are so fascinated by the Anna Nicole Smith saga that they had to stop by and catch a glimpse, hopefully a photo, of the now-world-famous players: attorney Howard K. Stern (a surprise showing on Tuesday), ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead (a crowd favorite who now enjoys cheers, well wishes and near-rock-star status on the island) and mom Virgie Arthur, who would like temporary custody of that little baby, Danielynn.
As the spring break girls tell it, they "just want to know who the father is!" [VIDEO] And so does just about everyone here, locals included.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
I was sitting in solid traffic in downtown Tehran when the rebellion began – a handful of honking horns, quickly rising to a deafening crescendo, as more and more cars joined in.
The traffic lights ahead had been red for several minutes, and were being controlled by a policeman. You could tell that because a large digital sign that usually contained a countdown to the change of lights had been replaced by the letters "PO," for "Police Operated" – and the hapless policeman was not changing the lights anywhere near fast enough for Tehran’s impatient drivers.
The cars at the front edged forward like a herd of snarling beasts, horns blasting. Then one old Paykan taxi (a horribly polluting Iranian produced car that has been largely phased out, but which still make up the majority of taxis) led the charge across the junction, a stampede of metal close behind. The policemen, wisely hidden away in his police box, had little choice but to give way to the mob. The lights flickered to green.
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| Ian Williams / NBC News |
| Traffic clogging Tehran's streets. |
To me it seemed like yet another example of Tehran’s traffic chaos, where lights are frequently regarded as discretionary, rules routinely ignored. But my driver could hardly contain himself, and between bursts of laughter he told me how satisfying it was to be able to break the rules – to thumb your nose at authority – and get away with it, since there are so few opportunities to do that outside the car.
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By Truus Bos, NBC News Producer
Last week several generals, both Iraqi and American, made a point of describing how certain areas in Baghdad, especially some markets and shopping districts, were reviving due to the security crackdown.
"It's one of the ways we can measure success. Shops are re-opening their doors, market stalls are full of fresh fruit and vegetables, and people are flocking to these places to do their shopping because they feel safe," we were told. "It's a real sign of things returning to normal, especially where we've created pedestrian zones by blocking the streets off to vehicles, so car bombs have no access."
"It feels like walking around in Istanbul," said one major general. "I invite you to go and look for yourselves!"
"Let's go shopping," I quipped to our translators, which caused a mixture of hilarious and nervous laughter. I wasn't serious of course, because although it may be safe for local Iraqis to walk around a market, anyone looking Western is still a likely target for kidnappers and other criminals.
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By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
You gotta love the names. They're so eager, earnest, and hopeful: Camp Prosperity, Camp Liberty, and Camp Victory are the names of just a few of the U.S. military bases in Baghdad.
But there are other names, other realities, in the ancient City of the Caliphs.
A few miles from Camp Prosperity is what some U.S. soldiers call the "Dora Killing Fields," a fetid trash dump where militias, insurgents, gangs, and anyone else with a grievance and a gun dispose of bodies, often discovered by little boys who play soccer there and little girls who tend goats.
Not far from the PX at Camp Victory, where soldiers can buy frozen vacuum-packed T-bone steaks flown in from the states and a Harley Davidson (which is pretty damn cool), there is a cozy little spot other soldiers call "Sniper Fields."
There are many faces of the war in Iraq and they have changed dramatically over time.
When I first arrived in Baghdad in January 2003, I thought I would soon rent a house and envisioned myself swimming in the Tigris to cool off after reporting in the city the caliphs called Madinit al-Salam, the City of Peace. A year later, I realized I wouldn't be taking any midnight dips— Madinat al-Salam no more. Now, I think I'll have to be lucky to walk away from this story without being injured or killed.
Click here to read the rest of Richard Engel's Reporter's Notebook about covering the war in Iraq for the last four years and to see excerpts from his upcoming the documentary "War Zone Diary." The complete documentary will air on Wednesday, March 21 at 10 p.m. on MSNBC TV.
By Ann Curry, NBC News Correspondent & Anchor
How does one interview a man accused of unleashing genocide?
Flying now to Sudan, in a matter of hours I am to come face to face with President Omar al-Bashir, whom the world lays most of the blame for the atrocities in Darfur.
It was al-Bashir, international observers say, who armed Arab militias to put down a rebellion among the black African tribes in Sudan's Darfur region, encouraging old racial hatreds to burn out of control across the region. The toll is estimated at more than a thousand villages burned, more than 200,000 people killed and 2.5 million others displaced. The violence has bled across Sudan's western border into Chad, and it's southern border into the Central African Republic, theatening an entire region.
Click here to read more of Ann Curry's blog in The Daily Nightly about preparing for her interview with Sudan's president. Watch her interview on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams on Monday evening.
By Jim Maceda, NBC News Correspondent
As Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe continues to
crack down on the political opposition in his country -- disrupting its gatherings and beating and arresting its leaders -- NBC News' Jim Maceda spoke to Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who was attacked March 11 at an anti-Mugabe rally.
Click here to hear Tsvangirai speak out about the struggle for democracy in his country.
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
"Death to America!"
Tens of thousands of fists punched the air as the chant reverberated around the vast tent-like mosque at Tehran University.
For 28 years the religious and revolutionary faithful have packed in here for Friday prayers, listening to hard-line clerics heap scorn on the United States, chanting on cue.
Aware of the power of this image, the authorities have built a stage for television cameras, where we were invited to set up our tripod – a sea of faces below, and to our left the podium from where the cleric whipped up the crowd. A mild-mannered guide was on hand, explaining the order of play, and pointing out the dignitaries sitting near the front.
Another chant. “Death to America?” I inquired. “No,” the guide replied with the sweetest of smiles, “that was ‘Death to England.’” Clearly the presiding cleric had opted for a bit of variety in his performance this week in what must be one of the most enduring slogans of the Islamic Republic.
But is it a particularly accurate reflection of the way ordinary Iranians think?
CONTINUED >>
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
The Cuban government rarely misses an opportunity to stay on message. Using President Bush’s visit to Latin America this week, three top Cuban leaders warned against military action against the island.
“If anyone attacks us, we’re prepared to pay any price necessary (to defend the country). But, our invaders will pay a much higher price,” said Defense Minister and acting President Raul Castro, as he reviewed a tank unit in the western Pinar del Rio province, during the country’s annual war exercises.
“We are improving our readiness... against an enemy politically committed to destroy the Revolution,” said Raul Castro. He went on to call Cuba’s socialist Revolution “unbeatable.”
Raul, who has run the country’s military machine since he and his brother Fidel swept to power in 1959, described the yearly military exercises as a chance to display the country’s defense capabilities, and send the message to Washington that any type of military strike would turn into a protracted and lost war.
This year’s war games are being billed as the largest mobilization of reservists and active members of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces since the 1961 Bay of Pigs and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
Last night Tehran sounded like a war zone. It went on for hours - the thuds, pops and sometimes deafening bangs. Sparkling trails of rockets whizzed across the sky and bonfires raged in the middle of roads.
Crowds of mostly young people gathered along the streets and around the fires, mischievously rolling firecrackers under the feet of passers by - including, to our occasional alarm, the NBC crew.
Cars cruised around town, music blaring, youngsters hanging from the windows, dispensing their arsenal of rockets and firecrackers.
They were marking Chaharshanbeh-Suri, an ancient Iranian festival that dates back to at least 1700 B.C., and is a prelude to the Persian New Year, which falls on March 21 this year. The eve of the last Wednesday of the year – last night - is supposed to be the “Eve of Celebration,” the idea being that fire and light will bring happiness for the New Year.
On one road, crowds sang and danced around a huge bonfire, Iranian pop music blared from speakers on the wall of a nearby house, while a strobe light flashed behind. Young women, their compulsory headscarves well back on their heads, gyrated in the doorway. Then, as the fire got smaller, men and women lined up to jump over it. Children followed, some helped by the adults, a man banged out a beat on a drum beyond.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
An elderly lady, wrapped in her black chador, knelt in front of the grave, flowers in hand, while her husband washed the gravestone with a hose-pipe. Behind the stone, a glass-fronted cabinet carried a picture of a young man – their son. He’d been killed, at age 19, during the Iran-Iraq war.
“Something has to be done for Iraq,” said the mother, “so that all these people didn’t die in vain.”
CONTINUED >>
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
This week, the U.S. State Department unveiled its latest report card on human rights progress in Cuba and invited a group of Havana-based journalists to review the findings.
It was not your typical news conference, nor was it staffed with your typical reporters.
Most attending refer to themselves as "independent journalists" – or in other words – dissident voices silent on the island in the face of strict government control of the media. They mostly publish for Miami audiences or Internet outlets the average person here never sees.
Most came by bus and two even hitched a ride on the back of a flatbed truck. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a car owned among them. Some spent hours traveling to the colossal building on Havana's winding waterfront drive that houses the U.S. Interests Section here.
Most of the attendees never trained as journalists. Instead, they say, they were driven to report the news otherwise ignored here. They come from all walks of life, ranging from two guys who work in sugar cane fields, to a retired college professor of literature, to a married couple who once worked as diplomats but were eventually hounded by the government to quit their posts.
The tools of their trade were simple. No fancy laptops or electronic organizers. Most didn’t use spiral notebooks, just sheets of plain white paper. And they were glad of the free pencils the U.S. diplomats handed out at the start of the news conference.
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By Bruno Silvestre, NBC News Producer
A few months ago, the watchdog group Transparency International published its yearly Corruption Perceptions Index. Out of 163 countries surveyed in 2006, only two, Myanmar and Haiti, were found to be more corrupt than Iraq.
This country was described as "one of the greatest corruption nightmares on the planet."
"That has to change" was the message delivered earlier this week by Boots Poliquin, the American director of the Office of Accountability and Transparency (OAT) in Baghdad. "We want to try and develop [a] sense of accountability and transparency within the system of Iraq."
His agency has been up and running for 45 days and Poliquin said he was extremely satisfied with the response and the cooperation he’s received from the Iraqi authorities. However, the local culture, the ongoing cases against unscrupulous contractors, and Paragraph 136B of the Iraqi Criminal Procedure Code are likely to render his job almost impossible.
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By Mike Mosher, NBC News Producer
I was just finishing my work day Tuesday when a news flash came that a Garuda Indonesian Airways jetliner caught fire upon landing at Adisucipto airport in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a popular tourist destination.
Since my wife, Mahdiana Badri, is Indonesian, we make family visits there and I’ve developed a strong list of contacts. To help NBC News correspondent Michael Okwu update the Western Edition of Nightly News, I began to make some calls. Within a few minutes we had confirmed the crash and determined there were casualties. Survivors were being taken to local hospitals.
Once the smoke cleared, we learned at least 21 people died in the crash. At least 115 others survived. Among the victims were nineteen foreigners, including nine Australian journalists. An Indonesian television cameraman for Australia’s Seven Network, Wayan Sudarka, shot dramatic video of dazed survivors scrambling off the plane before it burst into flames.
Small world comes home
That night, at home, I received a text message from my wife’s relatives in Indonesia: "Reza survived the Garuda plane that caught fire upon landing in Jogja this morning ... he seems to have hurt his leg/waist and is being treated at a hospital in Jogja for further observation."
Only then, after a long news day did I have a moment to reflect: It’s a small world and I have a big extended family. Reza Badri is my wife’s first cousin.
CONTINUED >>
By Tom Aspell, NBC News correspondent
Alawi is a skinny 13-year-old Shiite boy who lives near our Baghdad bureau. He has weak eyes and wears thick spectacles, and often shouts a greeting in English when he catches us going through the compound gates.
He lives with his parents and five younger siblings. His father is out of work so Alawi feeds the family by selling black market gasoline and delivering cooking gas cannisters. He makes a few dollars a day, and sometimes a little extra by holding a place for a neighbor in a long line of people waiting at the local gas station.
He was there last week waiting to refill a gas cannister. Iraqi guards were on duty to protect the crowd from bombers who frequently target gas stations, bus terminals and gatherings of day laborers looking for work. Sometimes they'll even attack funerals to inflict as many casualties as possible.
One of the guards asked Alawi to hop across the street and fetch him a sandwich. He left his empty gas cannister in the care of a friend, took the guard's money and ducked through a police convoy passing by.
That's when the bomb exploded.
Read the rest of Alawi's story and more of NBC News' Brian Williams reporting from Iraq in the Daily Nightly blog.
NBC News' Truus Bos writes about the good and bad news that can work it's way into one day in Baghdad for the Daily Nightly. Click here to read: "A new life among all the lives lost," as well as more reports from NBC News' Brian Williams trip to Iraq.
By Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News Producer in Bajaur and Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer in Islamabad
In the tribal areas of Pakistan, a shave may cost your life.
"The government is unable to protect us so we will abide by what the Taliban tells us to do and stop shaving beards," said Niamat, a barber in Khar, the headquarters of the Bajaur tribal agency along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
And the Taliban mean business, On Sunday night, bombs destroyed two barber shops and three others suffered partial damage after the owners refused to follow the orders.
"I am a Muslim and I know that no one can force me to shave or not to shave. This should be my decision," said Nasir, a regular customer, wearing a green turtleneck sweater and jeans. "But I was threatened. They asked if I will obey the new laws; I will obey because I am afraid."
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| Mushtaq Yusufzai / NBC News |
| A barber shop in the tribal region of Pakistan where the shaving of beards has been banned by the Taliban. |
A couple of weeks earlier, in the middle of the night, someone slipped leaflets under barbershop doors throughout the Bajaur Tribal Agency. The warning was hand-written in Pashto; the language of the Pashtun tribes who inhabit the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The leaflets read: "SHAVING BEARDS AND TRIMMING BEARDS IS UN-ISLAMIC AND IS FORBIDDEN. VIOLATORS WILL BE KILLED."
The customers panicked and the barbers panicked too. In almost every barber shop the barbers put up signs begging their customers not to force them to give a shave.
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By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
Reza Elmanan ran his hand over a carpet of deep reds and browns, turning the edge to show the fine weaving. "It’s from Tabriz, pure silk, one hundred years old. For you, $2,000," he said, "but we can talk about the price."
These aren’t good times for Elmanan. Sales have fallen by 70 percent from last year. "Everything is becoming more expensive, people can’t afford it," he complained, before blaming Iran’s president: "Ahmadinejad hasn’t delivered in his economic promises."
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| Ian Williams / NBC News |
| A view of the bustling Tehran market. |
Elmanan’s carpet shop sits amid the mayhem of the Tehran bazaar, miles upon miles of narrow crowded alleyways, lined with colorful shops and stalls selling just about everything. It’s Iran’s economic heart, and we were advised that this was the place to come to feel the nation’s economic pulse. CONTINUED >>
By Petra Cahill, World Blog editor
Brian Williams, NBC's Nightly News anchor, is in Baghdad to report on the war in Iraq this week. He and his team of producers, as well as other Baghdad based correspondents, will be sending in behind-the-scenes blogs and video snippets all week. Please see the Daily Nightly blog for updates on their journey.
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
I can now understand why Ali Larijani was chosen as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, and can sympathize with those who sit opposite him at the negotiating table.
He is also head of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council, and with President Ahmadinejad abroad, it was left to the wily Larijani to answer questions about whether
Iran would attend a regional security conference on Iraq – a conference that will involve the highest-level contact with the United States in more than two years.
His answer was variously interpreted as "yes," "yes, maybe," "yes, sort of," and "I’m thinking about it." Even the Iranian media couldn’t quite figure it out. What he actually said, according to the English translation on the official Iranian news agency web site, was this, "We will participate in a conference of Iraqi neighboring states in Baghdad in March, if it will be of help to Baghdad."
He also said he didn’t regard the United States, or the members of the U.N. Security Council, as "neighboring states," and Iraq’s foreign minister now says that while Iran has accepted the invitation Tehran still has "some questions."
CONTINUED >>
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
Sex, cheating husbands, AIDS … That’s the talk at Havana’s Aphrodite Beauty Parlor and it’s enough to curl your hair.
The salon — located in Cerro, a dense urban district with the fourth-highest incidence of HIV infection on the island — is really a store-front health center in disguise.
Hairdresser Leticia Santa Cruz, 43, came up with the idea. She wanted a sure-fire way of reaching middle-aged married women, a vulnerable sector of Cuban society and a group frequently overlooked by AIDS educators.
Santa Cruz has cut hair in this neighborhood for 17 years and, after losing a dear friend to AIDS, began work as a community AIDS activist for almost the same stretch of time. "I’ve heard a million stories from my clients," she said.
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| Roberto León/NBC News |
| A customer at Havana’s Aphrodite Beauty Parlor reading an AIDS pamphlet as she sets her hair. |
Women feel safe in the female world of a beauty parlor, she believes. "Here, they can laugh or cry. They can pour out their hearts and soul."
She sold her idea to Cuba’s health ministry, convinced allies in the battle against AIDS to join her, and found $50,000 in funding from U.N. agencies. Even before they finished fixing up an abandoned beauty parlor, women began lining up at the door.
"The beauty parlor is really a pretext to educate women about dangers in their lives," said Santa Cruz. "Here, we are more interested in teaching women about safe sex than fixing their hair."
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