DivaWire http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire en mail@adventuredivas.com Copyright 2010 2010-04-05T18:17:00-08:00 Kiran Bedi, India’s top cop…. http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/kiran-bedi-indias-top-cop/ Top Indian cop Kiran Bedi, who we featured in our documentary “India: Holy Cow" a few years ago, just won the 2010 EPIC Award which will be presented by Meryl Streep this week.  Bedi will be in NYC to accept the award, and to attend a screening of “Yes, Madam Sir” - a new documentary (a decade in the making) about her extraordinary, rabble-rousing life as India’s best-known and highest ranking police diva.  Check out part of our interview with Bedi here. 

]]> 2010-04-05T18:17:00-08:00 International Women’s Day, #101 http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/international-womens-day-101/ Happy International Women’s Day, one and all. We love the holiday-as-call-to-action idea.  To that end, first have a looksy at
at a history of IWD on this, its 101st anniversary, and also find a listing of today’s events.
....then, if you’re not able to take to the streets or limbo for liberation (or even if you are) consider digging deep
for women around the world who could really use support right now. 
The ever-important Global Fund for Women’s new video will inform you in terms of action overseas, and we’re big fans of Madre, who have their hands full with recent earthquake relief.

- diva hq

]]> 2010-03-08T18:25:00-08:00 Gupta wins Clinton Global Initiative Citizen Award http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/gupta-wins-clinton-global-initiative-citizens-award1/ Ruchira Gupta, the anti- sex trafficking activist who started Apne Aap, will be awarded a whopper of an award by President Bill Clinton tomorrow.  When we met with her in India for our documentary “Holy Cow" she told us: “What we want to do is actually eradicate sex trafficking and the exploitation inside prostitution...The good news is that the women are willing to fight. Six years ago, when I came into this brothel, they were so timid and they were so scared, they were not willing to even talk to each other. They did not let outsiders in, and today, six years later, you can see the laughter and the joy that they have.”

Everyone from the Clinton Global Initiative to Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn (who featured Ruchira’s work in their new book Half the Sky) seems to be talking about the truth that empowering women and girls is the most important action that can be taken in the world right now.  Let’s hope this tipping point, tips - and our cups runneth over.  Congratulations to Ruchira Gupta and for more about her important work check out www.apneaap.org

]]> 2009-09-23T22:38:00-08:00 Iran: an exclusive with the ‘real’ first lady http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/iran-an-exclusive-with-the-real-first-lady/ Since we’ve been calling attention to Zahra Rahnavard, we decided to dig into the Diva archives for this exclusive content.
Rahnavard is married to Hossein Mousavi, the man who most believe truly won the recent Iranian presidential election. She is credited as the architect of her husband’s campaign and for getting out the women’s vote. As you’ll read in the interview, she’s also a sculptor, feminist, author, former presidential advisor and dedicated Muslim. Click on for the full transcript.....

]]> 2009-06-26T17:02:00-08:00 Reporting back from Syria http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/reporting-back-from-syria1/ Turns out, the soap maker in Aleppo, Syria was a bit of a sage. Just a few weeks ago, as he handed me a delectable serving of shay’eebiyyat, he said, “Obama will come here soon. He is going to reach out.” Today, Obama decided to send an ambassador to Syria, a “sign of the deepening engagement between the Obama administration and the Syrian government,” says the New York Times.

Clearly Syria is a strategic hotspot in the Middle East. The evening news and the marketers of the Axis of Evil (as well as the State Department which has an ongoing travel warning for the country) might have you think Syria is a place lousy with Muslim extremists.

]]>I found it only lousy with kindness and hospitality.

Let’s hope the new (as yet unnamed) Ambassador to Syria will get out of the residence and learn a lot from tossing back shots of Bedouin coffee with local farmers, gossiping with the ladies in a Damascus hamam, or watching the sun set behind a medieval Crusader Castle with a picnicking Syrian family. I certainly did.  Person-to-person contact is a great way to combat the inflammations between the U. S. and the Middle East.  So, for your next far-flung sojourn, why not go to Syria?  It’s time for an army of ambassadors!

(You’ll need a visa so check out http://www.syriaembassy.org)

]]> 2009-06-25T15:22:00-08:00 New revolution in Iran?! http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/new-revolution-in-iran/ Zahra Rahnavard is galvanizing Iran - before the presidential voting, and now in the election’s tumultuous aftermath. She tells a Tehran audience, “Today we can close our eyes and see ourselves. Never have women had so much self-awareness. Women have always been just under the skin of history. Today, we assert ourselves.”

The LA Times is onto the story, and says of her:  “Some in the Iranian and Western news media have likened Rahnavard to Michelle Obama, but she more closely resembles Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady and New York senator whom many considered a driving force behind her husband’s political career and presidency.”

For more, including video, click here.

To get a copy of our PBS Iran documentary which features Rahvanard, click here.

]]> 2009-06-13T21:37:01-08:00 Rahnavard, fired up in Iran http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/rahnavard-fired-up-in-iran/ Zahra Rahnavard, who is married to Iranian presidential hopeful Hossein Mousavi and featured in our documentary “Behind Closed Cha-dors,” is shaking things up in Iran this week. When we met her she was chancellor of al-Zahra university for women in Tehran. In 2006 current president Mr Ahmadinejad’s Government ousted her from the University because she had invited Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate, to give a lecture. 

This week Rahnavard startled the nation by delivering a 90-minute tour-de-force press conference that that may lead to an (electoral) overthrow of President Ahmadinejad.

Read the Times report for the full story - but here are some highlights. In addition to demanding a public apology from Ahmadinejad (who recently dissed her again), Rahnavard accused Mr Ahmadinejad of “humiliating not just her, but all Iranian women, and of seeking to block their progress and deny them higher education. She said that he had violated his constitutional duty to defend the rights of all Iranians, and brought shame on his office. “I will not relax until I teach him a lesson,” she declared.” (Emphasis mine.)

She went on to promise “that her husband, if elected, would appoint women to Cabinet posts for the first time, and name many female deputy ministers and ambassadors. He would end discrimination and ensure that women were no longer treated as second-class citizens. He would release women’s rights activists from prison and abolish the “morality police” who, during Mr Ahmadinejad’s first term, cracked down on women deemed to be dressed inappropriately. She even suggested that women should not be forced to cover their heads.”

Zahra for Prez!

]]> 2009-06-09T20:25:01-08:00 A Banker You Can Love http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/economic-revolutionary/ The paper may be in financial straits, but today the New York Times deserves a shout out for featuring the work of humanitarian Ela Bhatt who started the revolutionary labor union SEWA (the Self Employed Women’s Association) decades ago in India. When the AD crew and I met and interviewed her for our India show, she told me, “Poverty is a matter of power, and as long as the poor remain powerless, poverty will never be removed from our country. The poor are not idle, they are all economically very active, otherwise they won’t survive. We don’t have a welfare system, so they have to work. They will work harder and harder, and they try to make any activity productive and try to make money off it so that they can survive.” We were enamored by how such a soft spoken, gentle person was also an extraordinary powerhouse.  Read more about our time with her here, and also check out today’s Times.

]]> 2009-03-07T21:40:00-08:00 Gang of Pink http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/gang-of-pink/ Check out the BBC’s report on The Gang of Pink, an amazing story of vigilanteism by women in India.
Unlike the late Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi, who was purportedly more bandit than queen, these women dressed in pink saris
are taking matters into their own hands and fighting on behalf of the disenfranchised by any means necessary.

]]> 2008-11-24T18:38:00-08:00 Cud, Sweat and Fears http://www.adventuredivas.com/divawire/posts/cud-sweat-and-fears/ Since Holly Morris’ GlobeTrekker show about crossing Niger is airing now on PBS, we thought a dispatch about her misguided entry into a camel race (adapted from her book) was in order...  - the eds.

update 12/16/08:  Tuareg rebels kidnap UN envoy. Tensions high in region.

A Day at the Races
My thighs grip the ornate tamzak saddle and sweat soaks its brightly colored leather fringe as I line up, atop a fifteen-hundred-pound leggy white camel, with 90 other competitors - men wrapped in indigo-pounded cheches and hollering to one another in Tamachek.  We are all aggressively jockeying for an inside position; crops are gripped as tight as the tension in the air. A blacksmith raises his glistening takouba silver sword, poised to begin the race.  My armpits tingle and my guts suddenly flood with nausea.
I’m in Niger, West Africa, making a film with the nomadic Tuareg people, a disenfranchised tribe who’ve been the independent warriors of the trans-Saharan highway for a millennium.  These camel races, called cavalcades, are part of a centuries old tradition, and my fellow competitors have walked for days or weeks to enter the race in hopes of taking home both status and cash.
I wasn’t supposed to enter the race.

]]>But as an adventure television correspondent and writer, it’s in my job description to steer clear of comfort zones, and participate whenever possible.  Problem is, this ethic often smashes into other, higher ideals - or just plain common sense.  Too often I am fathoms down, or gripping a dodgy precipice, or face-to-face with a delicate cultural impasse, contemplating a lesson learned too late. In this case, as the sword is about to drop on a blistering 105 degree afternoon, it hits me like a tsunami that the reasons I should not rip through the desert racing against veiled men with sharp swords who have done this drill since the time of Muhammad - are many.  Bodily harm and ‘inappropriate cultural interaction’ are two that pop to mind. But these moments, I also know, are grist for our traveler souls. It’s only when we hurl ourselves at the unexpected, engage the experiences and people we meet - on their turf, with integrity - that we see the world with a wider, more original lens.

Lost in Translation
Aaaaaand theyyyyyyre offff…
The sword drops and the next fifteen minutes are a blur of survival tactics, rapid-fire cussing, and wholesale regret. My rusty horseback-riding skills do not translate, and my dream of winning is trampled within moments.  I just want to live.
My camel runs at a fast, tenth-gear trot, and I shamefully grip the saddle’s dramatically forked horn; its silver bells and brass ornaments jangle frenetically. I try to do like the rider just ahead of me, contorting my legs around the camel’s long, curvy neck, and thump haphazardly, applying pressure, with my bare feet. The camel responds like Secretariat, lurching us ahead several lengths and passing two contenders.
I whiz past groups of onlookers who’ve come here from villages across the nearby oasis of Timia, and consider the depth of my outsider status - a common conundrum on such far-flung journeys. Should a foreigner be participating in such a local custom ? Am I piggy-backing on colonial privilege? Meddling in a fragile culture?  Certainly, the Federation would strip my stripes for playing fast and loose with the Prime Directive.  But I wonder, too, if these ideas aren’t a bit patronizing and dated. If we want cross-cultural exchange that means something, (not one in which the developing world is a parts car for the developed world) then shouldn’t we fully engage on all fronts: goods, data, experience and - for the purposes of today’s high-minded justification- the racecourse?

Crossing the Line
But the global village fades into the distance as my steed and I finally achieve perfect sync. With a final gasp, we throttle across the finish line placing second - to last - by a nose.
A dozen women in orange, blue, black veils charge forward, their heavily bangled hands smudging the camel’s head with indigo. We are engulfed in a mele of ululating and smiles and rapping on tinde drums. It’s incredibly exhilarating – tanenmert, I say, thanks - but their enthusiasm is curious. After all, we finished nearly dead last.
The lead blacksmith walks up and, in French, explains the fuss, and the magnitude of my trespass into this five-thousand-year-old tradition, “You are the first woman ever to enter this camel race. They can’t believe you even finished.”
“This girl over here says she wants to race next year,” he adds, pointing to a young Tuareg woman of about fourteen who shyly smiles from behind her black veil.
“Really?” I smile back, moved and worried. It’s one thing for me to buck mores, and entirely another for a local girl to do so.  Who’s to say: traveler inappropriately messes with status quo? Or, a lesson in having to cross the starting line, in order to move it. 

]]> 2008-09-09T21:03:00-08:00