KABUL – In the United States, being a Boy Scout or a Girl Scout is just one of many diversions offered to kids. 

But here in Afghanistan, it's not simply a diversion – it's a matter of survival. The worldwide scout motto, "Be Prepared" ("Tayar Osay" in Pashto) takes on a larger, more urgent, importance in this war-torn country.

We could see that clearly at the Alluhodin Orphanage in Kabul on a recent afternoon. Twenty girls, who had been selected out of hundreds at the orphanage to be Afghan Scouts, were training for their safety badges. 

A round of first aid demonstrations was being led by Zainab Ramin, a 16-year-old who came to the orphanage four years ago from Mazar-i-Sharif after her parents were killed in the war with the Taliban.

VIDEO: Scouting in Afghanistan

At first, she and her younger sister went to live with their only relative, an uncle. But he and his wife would not allow the sisters to attend school.  "[We] just worked in the neighborhood houses like washing clothes [or] taking the garbage outside," recalled Zainab. A neighbor took pity on them and suggested they go to the orphanage.

"We go to school and study our lessons.  It's so good for us, and also we are so happy," she said. 

Zainab especially enjoys being an Afghan Scout and admires its values. "A Scout has good character," she said. "A Scout is kind."

Inspired by an old scout
She joined the program after it was launched this summer by PARSA, an Afghan non-governmental organization that works on grassroots development programs. It is currently overseen by Marnie Gustavson, a Seattle native who spent part of her childhood in Kabul during the 1960s.   

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Sixteen-year-old orphan Zainab Ramin wants to be a "brave" Afghan Scout.

Gustavson got the idea to launch the Afghan Scouts from her 28-year-old son, Reese Hume, a former Boy Scout, who has lived in Kabul for the last two years working with PARSA. The pair was traveling in Bamiyan when they encountered a car stuck in snow. "Reese stopped the car to help them and actually had the materials in the back of the car to do the [job]," said Gustavson. 

She realized it was her son's Boy Scout background that had taught him to be so well-prepared.  So she asked him if he wanted to start an Afghan Scouts program.

Hume, who used to work in a children's rehabilitation center in Seattle, didn't hesitate.  "The kids here are so much more open and curious," he said. 

In August, Troop 001 was initiated, consisting of 20 boys and 20 girls aged six to 17.  The Afghan Scouts have created their own oath and rely on donors to sponsor each troop.

The Afghan Scouts actually have a long history; the first camp was established in 1931 and became a thriving nationwide institution until the communists took over the country in 1978.  The Russians folded the Scouts into the Soviet Young Pioneers, a movement started under the Communist Youth League in the former U.S.S.R. that was also notorious for encouraging children to spy on their own families, neighbors, and classmates.  

During the 1990s, the Scouts sought to re-establish themselves in Afghanistan, but their efforts foundered under the Taliban, which banned girls from joining.

The newest version of the Afghanistan Scouts Association was re-started in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, and in at least one way captures the idea of a hopeful, more contemporary society. 

"In the U.S., we have Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, they are two separate organizations, which run different programs," noted Gustavson. "It's kind of ironic really that here in Afghanistan, boys and girls are together, the same."

The Afghan Scouts also differ from the U.S. scouts programs in another fundamental way.

"Girl Scouts in America is … a learning activity," said Gustavson, who was an American Girl Scout herself as a pre-teen. "But it's not as essential as our program is right now on all different levels. We will integrate … much more adult skills."

And that, right now, is the whole point of the Afghan Scouts.

Scout medical training is a major part of the program at the orphanages. "It's very, very relevant for the Afghans, where in the U.S. they may or may not ever need to use those skills.  But with these children, it could be a matter of life or death," said Gustavson. 

It's also about preparing the children for adulthood. 

"The kids in the orphanages get schooling," said Yasin Farid, a founder and the National Director of PARSA.  "But they don't get life skills."

So the Scouts program is designed to equip them with the skills and confidence so that "by the time they leave the orphanage, they can sustain themselves," said Farid.

Still, it's not that easy for Afghan girls, no matter how much training they receive. 

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Shafiullah Habibi just turned 18 and will have to leave the orphanage soon.

A critical social question is what to do with the children who, according to Afghan law, must leave the orphanage when they reach the age of 18.

Shafiullah Habibi, whose confident demeanor belied his anxiety, just turned 18. "Next year, I don't know," he said when I asked him what he thought 2010 would have in store for him. He has lived at the Tai Maskan orphanage for nine years.

He said he has two older brothers who live and work in Iran, but they don't send any money home. Since Shafiullah also has two younger sisters he needs to start looking after, he will probably have to start looking for a job. "If they let me [stay] in the orphanage, I will continue my [education].  If they won't let me, I should go to work."

But he didn't know what kind of job he will be able to find.  "I am scared," he admitted.  "Because outside [the orphanage] is very dangerous."

Saliha Farid, a PARSA social worker, explained that options for young Afghan men are limited once they leave the orphanage. "After finishing their education, boys have the option to go to the military – to the government side or the insurgency side to earn money," said Farid. 

Shafiullah said that he would never join the military on either side. "I would like to die …helping my people. I don't want to go outside Afghanistan.  There are two countries I never want to go – Pakistan and Iran," said the young patriot. "I hear if I go at this age to Pakistan, they will train me as a suicide attacker and send me back to Afghanistan."

But what are the options for the girls? "Girls are not allowed to live alone in Afghanistan. Or with each other," said Gustavson. "They must be with their extended family, or they get sold off to a family, or they're married off."

Gustavson is considering setting up a boarding school for girls in this age bracket. "We're looking to pilot it and to show that it works and get the girls all into college so they can get on with their lives."

But in the meantime, girls like Zainab face a very uncertain future that too often seems without hope.

Zainab will turn 18 in two years, but she is already worried about her own future and that of her country.

"My uncle is not ready to let us study and finish our school," said the girl who dreams of becoming a psychologist.  Like Shafiullan, she believes in helping her own people.  "That's what a scout is. We are getting ready for the future of Afghanistan …We can help the people."

Click here for more information about PARSA

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia – The road to Mecca for Islam's annual hajj is littered with needles this year. Before you even leave your country of origin you have to get vaccinations for meningitis, seasonal flu, yellow fever, and for the lucky, the H1N1 vaccine. 

Our trip started in Cairo, where Egyptian authorities are keen to prevent their residents from catching the H1N1 virus during the yearly pilgrimage and bringing it back home. 

They insisted on a complete physical, including blood tests, chest x-rays and electrocardiograms to make sure we were healthy enough to travel before we were even allowed to get the H1N1 vaccine, which Egypt requires of all hajj pilgrims. China, Turkey, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and others also are mandating the H1N1 vaccine.

Why are they so afraid? For at least five days, more than three million pilgrims from 160 countries are assembling in one place at one time, worshipping, eating and sleeping next to each other. For Muslims, it is the spiritual voyage of a lifetime; but for the H1N1 virus, it is the opportunity of a lifetime to hitch a ride on hosts that will deploy to the four corners of the earth.

Saudi Press Agency via EPA

Hajj pilgrims wear protective face masks ahead of the start of the hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday.Â

That is why the Saudi government, in conjunction with the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been hard at work for several months reviewing every possible step of the pilgrims' journey – from pre-departure, arrival, pilgrimage, departure and post-departure – to limit the spread of the virus and its chance to mutate.

Precautions at the border
At the airport in Jeddah, where 65 percent of all pilgrims arrive, travelers have to pass a gamut of tests before going through passport control. 

First, they file one-by-one past thermal sensing cameras, designed to set off an alarm if they sense a high body temperature. Feverish passengers are taken to an isolated area and then to a specially designed hospital to be tested for the H1N1 virus on state-of-the-art equipment that will deliver a result in three hours. If they have the virus, they are kept in hospital for seven to ten days and released to rejoin the hajj. 

Those who succeed in passing the cameras then have their vaccination records checked. If they are missing common vaccines, they are taken to an airport health clinic for free vaccination. If they received their H1N1 vaccine less than 10 days prior to travel (the time required for the vaccine to be effective) they are given antibiotics as a protective measure.

While the H1N1 vaccine is highly recommended, it is not mandatory for entry into Saudi Arabia since it may not have been readily available in the traveler's country of origin. Also, some travelers, and local Saudis, didn't take the vaccine out of a fear of side effects.

An army of health workers — 450 at Jeddah airport alone – recommend further protective measures, such as protective masks and hand washing, before pilgrims are allowed to continue on their way. New arrivals run through the same series of tests at every port of entry in Saudi Arabia, and the government has deployed even more border security to prevent undocumented visitors from slipping in.

Saudi Press Agency via EPA

Packets with sanitizing hand gel and face masks being handed out by Saudi medical authorities in Mecca to fight the spread of the H1N1 swine flu at the hajj.

Still, a sea of humanity 
However, once inside the holy city of Mecca, which is closed to non-Muslims, the scene is less controlled. Crowds fill the streets, with the vast majority of them unmasked. Saudi sanitation workers scrub the sidewalks and walls with disinfectant, but for many pilgrims, disease-prevention is not top of mind.

People sit on curbs eating greasy rice and meat off Styrofoam plates, sometimes with bare hands, and share soft drink cans with companions. Others cough or sneeze openly or spit on the ground. Many are well past the recommended age limit of 65 years and some appear frail. And despite the Saudi efforts to guard the country's borders, there are still a few who have managed to sneak into the country and claim a patch of pavement for their living quarters.

One man from Nigeria said he got the H1N1 vaccine at home, but he was nervous anyway.

"I'm worried because it affects human beings. It can attack anybody and instantly you can die." Still he wasn't wearing a mask or taking any other obvious precautions when our NBC crew spoke to him inside Mecca.

Another pilgrim, Osman, traveled all the way from Singapore for the Muslim rite of passage. He got the vaccine before coming, but was resigned to his fate one way or the other.

"I'm not very concerned about it because I have already decided to come to the hajj," he said. "And if my faith says [getting H1N1] is going to happen here, it doesn't matter to me."

Shaky Shar, a pilgrim visiting from Turkey, said he refused to take the vaccine because he was nervous about possible side effects. "We are worried about [contracting the flu] but we protect ourselves like this," he said, indicating a mask he was wearing.

Hassan Ammar / AP

Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba inside the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday. Â

Highly sophisticated monitoring                
Inside Mecca's crowded Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site, Saudi Arabia continues its fight against the unseen enemy.

Strategically placed thermal sensors monitor body temperatures.  And for the first time ever, experts from Saudi Arabia and the CDC are working together in Mecca to monitor detected cases in real time, provide command and control, and collect data that is relayed to the CDC in Atlanta. Random blood samples are taken from infected pilgrims to make sure the virus has not mutated. 

The challenge is enormous. Previous studies done on returning pilgrims show that anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of them brought upper respiratory infections contracted during the hajj home with them. And a separate British study demonstrated a spike in flu cases in the country at large weeks after pilgrims returned from the annual rite.

But the resources assembled to fight the potential threat to global health are equally impressive:  17,609 health care workers, 240 health care centers (at all holy sites and within the Grand Mosque itself), 26 well equipped hospitals and 170 mobile medical units each staffed by a doctor and nurse.

Dr. Ziad Memish, Saudi Arabia's executive director of infection prevention and control, was confident that they were well prepared.

"We do have a very active preventive medicine team that has experts in infectious disease who are actually manning each of the health care facilities that we have in the hajj premises, Mecca, Medina and Arafat," he said. "We have a team of infection experts that are circulating in the community and also the hospitals to make sure that there is no cross-transmission of infectious disease during the hajj time."

And it doesn't end there. Many returning pilgrims will be met by more doctors and thermal sensors when they return to their own countries. Those who are healthy will head home to celebrate with family. Those who manifest symptoms will be quarantined.

 Meanwhile, world health organizations will sift through a treasure trove of data. 

BEIJING – Five months after violence broke out in the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang, the area still remains under tight control. International calls are barred to and from Xinjiang. There is no Internet access available to the general population. And the government is in the midst of waging a "Strike Hard" campaign.

Earlier this month, nine people were executed for taking part in the July 5 riots, which official reports say killed 197 people. It was the worst single outbreak of violence in China in decades.

The violence erupted after ethnic minority Uighurs marched on Urumqi, the provincial capital, to protest the killing of two Uighur workers in southern China by Han Chinese. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking people that make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, where large numbers of Han Chinese have been migrating to over recent decades.

VIDEO: Will Western China have more ethnic unrest?

Writer Matthew Teague was on assignment for National Geographic magazine in Xinjiang, to "bring some information about the [Uighur] people to the reader" and arrived in China just after the unrest began. His article – along with photographs by Carolyn Drake – is in the December issue of the magazine. He described his experience to NBC News in the video link above.

Esha Momeni, an Iranian-American student who was taken into custody for protesting Iran's elections, talks about her participation in the protests and the time she spent in prison. NBC's Ali Arouzi reports.

VIDEO: Iranian-American goes from grad student to government threat

KARACHI, Pakistan – No one is exactly sure how old Taimur Muslim is.

A soft-spoken, lanky lad with a chipped front tooth and eyes undecided between green and gray, Taimur told me that school is his favorite part of the day, that he hates having to watch over his younger siblings at home, and that he wants to join the Army when he's older.

"I'm not very good in classes," he said through a shy smile. "But I don't want to be a loafer. Teacher says we musn't be loafers."

Taimur told me he was 10 years old. But on that point, his voice was a little unsure. It's an estimate – based on the fact that he began to work for a tailor full-time when he was 7 years old. He worked there for about three years, but stopped because of back problems. That's when he came here and started kindergarten, just two months ago.

VIDEO: Schools offer hope for lucky few in Pakistan

Taimur is a student at a private school in Machar Colony, a slum housing 700,000 residents on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan's most populous city. The school is tucked away in the narrow, trash-lined, labyrinthine streets and sits behind high walls and a guarded entrance gate. It was built and continues to be run by a Pakistani charity organization called the Citizens Foundation. 

Afshan Tabassum, the school's principal, said Taimur's story is typical for children in the area.  Parents were wary of the school at first; they were skeptical of a system that kept their children from working for part of the day and contributing to the family's income.

But within a few months, Tabassum said, the idea caught on. Parents were lining up to enroll their children, eager to give them the education they themselves never had. Most of the students, she said, work during the half-day they don't attend classes, and few have any idea how old they really are. The taller ones claim to be ten – mainly because that's the age they think they should be.

"These kids have a very tough life," explained Tabassum. "When I first arrived at this school, I tried to visit every child's home to meet their family, to learn about their problems. I learned just how difficult these children's lives are. Not only do they all work, they are also trying to go to school."

In Taimur's kindergarten classroom, he stands almost a head taller than most of the other students. His classmates, however, are a motley crew—some are literally half the height of others, ranging in age from 5-year-olds up to 10-year-olds. Baggy school uniforms are cinched tightly around too-slim waists. Pant cuffs are rolled up several times over to achieve the right length. During a math lesson, simple arithmetic problems on the chalk board are quickly and easily finished by some. And others are wholly incapable of completing basic addition.

But still, sitting in a solidly constructed classroom, with freshly painted walls and a clean courtyard sitting just outside windows lined with potted plants, these kids are the lucky ones. Just like nearly 10 million children across Pakistan, most children in Machar Colony slum never go to school.

Filling a need
The Federal Education Ministry published a national study in November 2008 showing that literacy rates across the country hover around 50 percent, and dip as low as 22 percent for women in underserved areas like Baluchistan. More than a third of all students who actually enroll in the public school system end up dropping out before they ever reach the sixth grade. And those statistics mark an improvement over ten years ago, when more than 50 percent of students dropped out by the same age.

The goal for Ateed Riaz, one of the founder-directors of The Citizens Foundation, is to maintain that trend of improvement.

Riaz said the government simply did not have the capacity to run the education system it nationalized in the 1970s and that the bureaucratic red-tape and political interference that now run the system have driven it into the ground. Though there have been over a dozen high-level commissions on how to fix the system, few, if any, of the recommendations have ever been implemented. Private charities and non-governmental organizations have stepped in to fill the void.

The Citizens Foundation is one such charity that raises money, mostly from expatriate Pakistanis, to build and run private schools across the country. They build schools in hard-to-reach rural or under-served urban areas and train handpicked teachers to educate as many children as they can with the standard, national curriculum.

Since its inception in 1995, the Citizens Foundation has built over 600 schools across Pakistan and enrolled 80,000 students.

But the education they receive, Riaz said, is not just about being able to read and write.

"Most of them, once they've graduated, will just mix and mingle with the rest of the population," said Riaz. "So once they mix and mingle, their voice should be a voice of reason, a voice of peace. I hope the children coming out of our schools are good, caring children, looking after their neighborhoods, their societies, and are more tolerant."

During English class at the Machar Colony school, the expression on Taimur's face wavered between confusion and excitement as the teacher pointed to the letters "A," "B," and "C" written across the board. When I asked him afterwards if he enjoyed the class, he said his favorite part is learning the English translation of Pashtu words.

"Like C for Cat!" he said excitedly, pointing to a stray cat sauntering across the courtyard, and laughing excitedly. His teachers said that in the two months since he's been at the school, he's made big strides and attends class regularly.

Taimur said he wants to make it all the way to graduation, and is trying to convince his mother to enroll his younger siblings as well.

"I started late because I was working," he said. "But they don't have to."

 

 TEL AVIV – Israelis this week were shocked to hear that starting in January 2010, their monthly water bill will cost 40 percent more.

Being in an extremely arid climate, every school age child in Israel is constantly reminded that water scarcity is a critical national issue. The slogan "Every Drop Counts" is repeated over and over in schools and by the media. Water supplies have gotten so low that now Israelis will not only need to stop watering their gardens and take shorter showers, but will also have to pay more for every drop.

VIDEO: In Israel 'every drop counts'

But the issue has created a great catalyst for private Israeli companies to develop innovative ways to recycle wastewater, desalinate water and irrigate more efficiently.

The Water Technologies, Renewable Energy and Environmental Control (WATEC) exhibition in Tel Aviv this week showcased companies from all over the world working on water issues.

The exhibition had companies ranging from the makers of huge water valves to educational organizations like the Israeli Ein Shemer Greenhouse facility. The facility invites school kids, researchers and businessmen to build environmental projects emphasizing the need to educate the next generation. 

A special hall was dedicated to hi-tech companies. One that caught my eye was called Emefcy that is developing innovative ways to create energy out of waste water treatment.

"We're developing a waste treatment device that will not consume any energy for treating the waste water," said Eytan Levy, Emefcy's CEO. "But will produce electricity directly from electrodes that are immersed in the waste water

Researchers predict that water, and not oil, will emerge as a major cause of conflict in the future, particularly in the Middle East. That's one reason why water in Israel is a national priority. Israel is predicting that by 2012 most of its agricultural water will come from recycled sewage. And that five years from now, when an Israeli citizen turns on their tap, most of the water, if not all, will be from desalination.

I was ready to leave the exhibition when I noticed a woman with a "KENYA" badge on. It drew my attention since I just returned from a reporting trip there. I approached the woman, Jacqueline Musyoki, to get her take on the exhibition. "Oh, I have such a headache," she said, laughing and holding her head. "All this high-tech is giving me a headache."

All she was a looking for was a simple filter that she could buy for kids in Kenya so they can filter dirt out of water often taken from unsanitary rural water holes. I sent her to the information desk looking for a product called a "life straw" which does just that. 

BETHLEHEM, West Bank – "I felt very nervous and frightened walking through the Erez Crossing today. I was forced to go back to Gaza. My family was waiting for me to return with my university degree, but I came home without carrying the dream that they were waiting for," said Berlanty Azzam, a 22-year-old woman from Gaza, in a phone interview Tuesday.

Azzam has been a student at Bethlehem University since 2005. Four years later and just two months shy of completing her degree in business management, Azzam was stopped on Oct. 28 at a routine Israeli checkpoint near Ramallah, in the West Bank, on her way to a job interview.  

When the Israeli guard noticed Gaza City on her ID card, she was immediately arrested for being in the West Bank without permission. Within hours, according to her attorney, Yadin Elam, she was blindfolded, handcuffed, and removed to Gaza by force – without any kind of hearing or access to a lawyer before she was deported.  

Tara Todras-whitehill / AP

Berlanty Azzam, a Palestinian student talks during an interview in Gaza City on Nov. 12.

Azzam admits that she did not have the required permission to study in the West Bank – something that has been increasingly difficult for Gazans to obtain since Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement, took over Gaza in 2007 and the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that students from Gaza had to obtain a permit. 

But, Elam said, those permits didn't exist when she initially enrolled in Bethlehem University back in 2005. At that time, Azzam received a four-day permit to enter Israel, traveled to Bethlehem to enroll and never went back to Gaza. She also said that she repeatedly tried to get permit-application forms, without success.

Azzam, a well-spoken, educated woman, celebrated her 22nd birthday on Monday far from the campus where she hopes to obtain her degree. She particularly wanted to study in heavily Christian Bethlehem because of her faith (she is one of an estimated 1,500-2,500 Christians living in Gaza).

The Israeli government military, Elam says, makes no claim that Azzam poses a security threat. But, according to Israel's rules, even if a student from Gaza is declared risk-free and seeks to cross to the West Bank for the sole purpose of studying, once in the West Bank, that individual may in theory decide at any moment to engage in terrorist acts; therefore, he or she is not permitted to be there.

This policy has a particularly adverse effect on students' educational aspirations since many university programs don't exist in Gaza and can only be studied in the West Bank.

Her case has drawn widespread attention in Israel and has caught the attention of the U.S. State Department. According to the Washington Post, officials from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv have made inquiries about the case with the Israeli government. 

"Berlanty, and other Palestinian students from Gaza, have the right to access Palestinian universities in the West Bank," said Sari Bashi, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli non-profit organization that uses legal assistance to try to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians and is representing Azzam. 

"Allowing them to do so also promotes Israeli and U.S. interests in helping young people access the educational resources they need to build a better future in the region," said Bashi. "There is no security claim against Berlanty. It is not clear what Israel gains by preventing her from completing her degree."

The pressure appears to have worked: Israel's high court ordered the military to give Azzam an opportunity to challenge her removal to Gaza at an administrative hearing. The military held a hearing Tuesday on the Gaza side of the Erez Border Crossing between Israel and Gaza, attended by Azzam and her attorney.

"The army did today what it should have done that October night when Berlanty was arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded and forcibly removed to Gaza. [It] listened to what Berlanty has to say," said Elam. "We hope that they will decide the right thing and allow her to go back to her studies." 

Until her case is decided, Azzam is biding her time and hoping that she will be able to return to school soon.

"After the military hearing today, I'm optimistic about returning to Bethlehem soon to be able to achieve my family's dream of receiving a degree," Azzam said over the phone from Gaza on Tuesday night. "And so I can prove to the whole world that the degree was my main – and only – goal in the West Bank."

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan – Even as the Pakistani army steps up its offensive against the Taliban in Pakistan's northern tribal region, there are increasing concerns about militants from Afghanistan seeking safe haven in a different part of the country: Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwest Baluchistan Province.

American military and intelligence officials believe that the Taliban ruling council, or shura, which commands and controls jihad efforts in Afghanistan, have abandoned their historic base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and crossed the border into Quetta.

In Pakistan, the issue is raised every day in the press and on the streets: Have the Afghan Taliban moved their power base from Kandahar and set-up shop in Quetta? Quetta is my home – my family and friends live there – so I had a personal, as well as professional stake in finding out what's been going on.

Some colleagues urged me to talk to Mullah Manan, a commander of 70 foot soldiers in Helmand province in Afghanistan, to try to get some answers.

'Welcome to Spin Boldak'
It took weeks to arrange an interview with Manan, but finally the meeting point was set for Spin Boldak, a town in Afghanistan, near Kandahar.

Four of Manan's men were waiting for me on motorbikes when I arrived by car in Spin Boldak. We exchanged greetings and then they blindfolded me and helped me onto the back of one of the bikes.

We drove for what seemed to be more than an hour, careening at breakneck speeds along narrow mountain roads. The driver zigzagged around rocks and potholes while the others seemed to follow closely behind. When we finally skidded to a halt, my blindfold was lifted.

I was led into a room in a modest house built of mud and sun-dried bricks and told to sit on the floor and wait. The room was mostly dark; there were no windows and no furniture, and the air smelled of damp wet mud. A dark green door of rotting wood was left ajar to let in some light.

After about 15 minutes, tea was served. Shortly afterwards, a young man with a thick, black beard entered, flanked by two others. "Welcome to Spin Boldak. I am Commander Mullah Manan," he said, "the second in command to Mullah Abdul Hakeem, the commander of Helmand Province."

Mujeeb Ahmad/NBC News

Taliban commander Mulla Manan seen during a recent interview in Spin Boldak, Afghanistan.

He wrapped a white turban around his head as he began to speak. "I just returned from a council meeting in Kandahar," he said. Manan laughed as he explained that the U.S. and NATO forces think they can identify the Taliban by their black turbans – but they don't understand that they only wear black at certain times. He seemed to enjoy pointing out that the Taliban are Afghans and dress like Afghans, which he said means they wear "baggy trousers, long loose-fitting shirts and white turbans." 

I was anxious to ask him about the rumors that the Taliban's shura, or ruling council, had moved to Quetta. "This is Western propaganda," he said. "The only true Taliban shura is the one led by Mullah Omar. It has 29 members and is spread around Afghanistan – some of the members are even holding key government posts. Their identities are known only among the shura members," Manan explained.

He was referring to Mullah Muhammad Omar, a reclusive, one-eyed cleric who is regarded by all the Taliban as their supreme commander and the founder of the movement.

"Where is Mullah Omar?" I asked.  

"Very few know his whereabouts, but I am sure he is still in Afghanistan," Manan replied. "Mullah Omar's orders are written down and then given to the shura members. They, in turn, pass them on to a chosen eight or nine others. Eventually everyone receives the orders. No one uses any form of telecommunications or electronic devices," Manan added with a smile.

NBC News

Taliban commander Mulla Manan, center, with reporter Mujeeb Ahmad on right with notebook and pen.

Peace proposal?
I pressed him with more questions about Taliban activities in Quetta, particularly because I'm worried about the threat of drones destroying my city and killing my family and friends.

"We are not safe in Quetta," Manan answered, referring to the Taliban forces. "These days, the Pakistani security forces are looking for us and it is no longer safe to even cross the border to visit friends. Besides," Manan added, "we control almost 80 percent of Afghanistan, why should we hide in Pakistan?"

Manan lectured me on the Taliban's war against American and NATO troops, calling them occupiers who must be expelled from his country. He said he had personally killed 15 foreign troops.

"We don't distinguish between American, British or other Europeans," he said. "They are all white people; they are all occupiers. We can never accept them and we will fight until we liberate our country."

"Will you guarantee to the Americans that if they leave [Afghanistan] there won't be another 9/11 attack against them?" I asked.

"Look, we want an Islamic state with Islamic laws," Manan replied quietly, while his eyes seemed to bore right through me. "If the Americans leave, then we will not concern ourselves with them any longer."

Manan paused and then asked: "Do you understand what I am telling you?" And then he put it this way. "That means we will never again allow our country to be used in the same way as it was used against America in the past."

"That sounds like a peace proposal," I said.

Manan laughed. He was quick to point out that this was the Taliban viewpoint, but since no one recognizes them as an international force, no one is asking them to abide by any international obligations.

"Look," he explained, "the Americans are offering huge sums of money to anyone who will lay down arms and join them. We are fighting for our independence and for our country. We believe in our cause and the Americans should stop trying to bribe us."

"Make no mistake," Manan added, "some of us will take their money, but none of us will ever give up our fight."

Mujeeb Ahmed is on the Executive Council of the Balouchistan Journalists Federation and is a reporter for AAj TV, the second leading news network in Pakistan. He is based in Quetta and is a contributor to NBC News in Pakistan.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Conflict in Pakistan
Power struggle threatens Pakistan's leader
Topics: More stories, videos, Web links on Pakistan

BEIJING – OK, I confess. If a Web site features a photo gallery of Michelle Obama's latest fashions, I click on it.

Like many other American women, I have a certain fascination with our first lady.

So there was a frisson of anticipation when we learned President Barack Obama would travel to China. Would Michelle come with him? What would she wear?  Not red, surely? What about when she met Chinese leaders?  Or when she met Chinese people?  (Had anyone here noticed the fact that she chose a dress by Jason Wu, an ethnic Chinese designer for the inauguration? Even though he was born in that renegade province, Taiwan?)

SLIDESHOW: Michelle Obama's effortless style

As it turns out, Michelle Obama isn't visiting China.

It also turns out the Chinese public doesn't have quite the same fascination with her as many others around the world.

"I don't really pay attention to her," was the common reply when, in an unscientific survey, we asked people on the streets of downtown Beijing what they thought of her. 

When we tried searching for "Michelle Obama" on people.com.cn, a popular chat room in China, we turned up no results.

And the absence of coverage of Michelle Obama in the Chinese media is noticeable compared to how much attention she receives from the Western press.

"She has been overshadowed by Obama," said Li Xin, a former international editor of a Chinese financial magazine which has profiled Hillary Clinton but not Michelle Obama. "Chinese media coverage will pay more attention to substance – what will make a difference to policy toward China rather than who [the Obamas are as people]."

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Media observers say President Obama's star power overshadows that of his wife. By Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

The Chinese media, according to Li, doesn't have the same propensity to humanize politicians or to try to put a human face on them. "And to some extent, Chinese media are not allowed to probe too much into political leaders' lives," she said.

Moreover, Michelle Obama has no counterpart in the Chinese realm. "The wife is usually backstage and doesn't come out and send a message by [herself]," said Li.

So while the Obamas may be viewed as something of a rock star couple on multiple continents, in China they're "just the couple who occupy the White House," said Hung Huang, a publisher and television talk show host in Beijing.  

And it's the ease with which Michelle Obama became first lady that may be why she doesn't get too much media coverage in China. "Her lack of controversy probably is the primary reason there is a lack of interest," said Hung. "Everyone just says she's a nice person, she's beautiful, she's powerful, she's married to one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history…OK, that's it!"

But there's also another reason some people were willing to comment only anonymously. "I think Chinese people find her a little scary," said one 30-year-old female Beijing resident.  "She's not that attractive to us."

Li put it more diplomatically. "Michelle Obama is seen as feminine in the U.S., but in China the perception of beauty is very different," she explained. "The Chinese standard would maybe prefer someone softer, more petite. She's so strong and independent and tough. [I've heard] from some co-workers and friends, they don't see her as pretty and don't understand why she was on the cover of Vogue U.S."

"In Chinese culture, the Chinese don't actually appreciate a woman like her," said Qu Wei. The 43-year-old freelance consultant is a self-professed fan of the first lady. She said Michelle Obama represents a new refreshing female ideal who telegraphs the message: "When you're getting older, when you're ageing, you can still be attractive."  

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The Chinese aesthetic, says some Chinese media pundits, is "skinny" – as seen on the covers of these magazines.

Qu reflects a narrow demographic which does find resonance with Michelle Obama: urbane, middle class Chinese women who are professionals tend to think highly of her skills and values as a mother, a strong partner, and an independent woman.  

"This is really the opposite of Chinese culture where men only appreciate young girls and don't really know how to appreciate women," said Qu.

And while Vogue China may not have put Obama on their cover yet, editor-in-chief Angelica Cheung said, "She represents the new woman and the new Vogue woman, which is what I'm trying to promote here, too.  A new woman looks good and has great taste, but also has a great career …and has a very rich life."

All of which makes it all the more of a let-down for her fans in China that Michelle Obama didn't accompany her husband on his state visit.

"Yeah, I'm very, very disappointed that she's not coming to China," said Qu. "I would like the Chinese to start knowing something about women like Michelle Obama, not only in that narrowly-defined [traditional] way."

BEIJING – It was President Barack Obama's first full day in China, jammed with morning meetings with city officials in Shanghai and afternoon sessions with central government leaders in Beijing. 

But the headline event was easily his town hall meeting with a group of highly vetted students in Shanghai, during which he also took several questions submitted over the Internet. China's blogosphere – the world's largest with 350 million Internet users and 60 million bloggers – was buzzing before, during, and after the event.

Among English-speaking residents across China, the reaction veered between scorn and disappointment, particularly over Obama's comment, "I'm a big supporter of non-censorship." He said this in response to a question about China's Great Firewall, the online filtering and surveillance program run by the communist government's Ministry of Public Security.

Jason Reed / Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama greets participants in a town hall-style meeting with future Chinese leaders at the Museum of Science and Technology in Shanghai on Monday.

"It pains me to write this…but Obama's performance this afternoon reminded me of nothing so much as an overly coached American businessman on his first trip to China, so concerned about what he should or should not say that he forgets what he wanted to say in the first place, and ends up going home with nothing but a hotel bill and empty promises," Adam Minter, an American writer, wrote from his home in Shanghai. 

On Twitter, which along with Facebook continues to be blocked in China and is accessible only through a proxy server, Western commentary also took exception to the foreign media coverage of Obama's speech. One disgruntled Twitterer wrote: "Guardian headline sez: 'Obama criticizes internet censorship in China.' O Rly? He only obliquely, generally endorsed online freedom." 

But another Twitterer made the point that by simply mentioning these issues Obama is raising some awareness. "If Obama's visit has let more CN ppl know twttr & www censorship, it's not in vain."

Indeed, within minutes of the president's town hall meeting, the top two Chinese Google searches were "What's Twitter" and "Obama Shanghai."

Still, it's unlikely that Obama's speech was seen by very many people in China. It was not broadcast live across the country on television. Instead, it was shown on local Shanghai TV and streamed on two Internet portals, but the quality wasn't very good.

Even hours after the event was over, we at NBC's Beijing bureau had difficulty finding decent video of Obama's town hall meeting on the Internet. It was available on whitehouse.gov, but many Chinese users complained about the quality of the video stream. It was also available on Facebook, but that wasn't much help since that site is censored in mainland China.

VIDEO: Obama holds town hall in Shanghai

'He's such a great speaker!'
Still, reaction from Chinese bloggers who did manage to see or hear about the speech was a bit more varied than their English-speaking compatriots. The chat forum on China's number one Web portal, sina.com.cn, received more than 10,000 comments from all over the country.

Quite a few Chinese netizens heaped praised Obama.

"The president is very eloquent and smart. He's such a great speaker!" one wrote. "President's Obama's speech is very pragmatic! He's not only based on American interests, but also of the world! He's the most impressive leader in American history, and we can feel his deep thoughts and the responsibility he's carrying for human progress!" wrote another.

Other comments were short and more cursory. One blogger wrote, "He's so young and cute!"

Still some expressed doubt over what can possibly come from Obama's words. "Obama is a great speaker, but the Sino-American relationship is not built on words. Chinese are not just listeners; they are partners too. Don't say one thing and do something else," wrote one blogger.

 "Why does trade protectionism always follow big compliments to China? And when will America stop selling weapons to Taiwan?" wrote another.

 And another wrote, "We don't need America's support or opposition to take back Taiwan…this is our internal affair and the U.S. should stay neutral."

Other netizens expressed dissatisfaction with the questions asked by students. "Why do the students only ask such soft questions?" And, "Why were Tibet and Xinjiang not mentioned at all?" Another wrote, "Such low-level questions! Poor college kids!"

These unhappy commentators may have been unaware that all the students invited to participate in the event had been cautiously hand-picked days before the meeting.

However, just hours after the town hall event, the "students" who posed questions became subjects of China's Internet vigilantes, who take it upon themselves to investigate people in the public sphere suspected of corrupt or immoral behavior.

Marked for their unfettered zeal, the literal translation of the Chinese term for this ad hoc group of sleuthing online activists is: "human flesh search engine."

Many of these amateur Internet detectives pointed out that the "first student" who asked Obama a question, Cheng Xi, is no ordinary student. Cheng is actually deputy chief of the Committee of Communist Youth League of Fudan University, in addition to being a student.

BEIJING – Liu Mingjie expected that President Barack Obama's first visit to China would bring more business to his little boutique shop in Beijing's popular Houhai area, a lakeside district filled with trendy restaurants and bars, souvenir shops and lots of tourists.

Until last weekend, Liu had been interviewed by both Chinese and foreign media about what he was selling: T-shirts that superimposed Obama's face over that of China's late Chairman Mao Zedong on the front, and the words "Oba Mao" on the back.

But Lui's brisk business was suddenly terminated by local government officials, just days before Obama's arrival in China, without any explanation. He says he was simply told, "No, you cannot sell Obama T-shirts anymore."

Liu Mingjie shows off the "Oba Mao" T-shirt he was selling out of his shop in Beijing, that is until the authorities told him to stop.

While the culture of mocking celebrities and politicians is not yet widely embraced in China, the possible embarrassment brought to the president of the United States by having his image on T-shirts dressed in the uniform of China's infamous Red Guards, who caused mayhem during the Cultural Revolution, was too much of a ticking bomb for local officials. Liu doesn't know when or whether he'll ever be able to sell his T-shirts again, but he's not the only one who is confused and upset.

Qi Zhiyong, a former factory worker who lost one leg during the crackdowns on student demonstrators 20 years ago that culminated in the infamous Tiananmen Square protests, has found himself suddenly forbidden to talk to the media and has been followed by plainclothes police for the last few weeks. 

VIDEO: 'Oba Mao!' China gets ready for Obama's visit

However, after protesting for two decades, Qi is used to constant harassment and forced silence during politically sensitive moment,  like the Beijing Olympics in 2008, last month's 60th anniversary of communism in China and Obama's upcoming visit. Qi and other dissidents are routinely locked up or kicked out of Beijing by the police to prevent them from talking to foreign delegations or the media.

'I don't care'
But while Liu's and Qi's lives have been temporarily derailed by the president's visit, the general public in China hasn't showed too much fervor over it.

A survey by China's leading Web portal Sohu.com and the English newspaper China Daily asked, "What's your viewpoint on Obama's visit to China?" Almost 40 percent of respondents said "I don't care" or "I have no expectations."

When asked "On what issues do you think China and America will reach more agreements after Obama's trip?" 56 percent answered, "I don't think the two countries will reach any more agreements."

And when our NBC News team went to Wangfujing, one of Beijing's most popular shopping areas, to speak with people about Obama's visit, more than half of the people we approached were unaware he was coming. 

However, in our unscientific survey, those who were interested in the visit agreed on what they cared about most: trade. And according to online surveys, more flexible trade policies and communications between the two countries are the top concern of Internet users.

Frederic J. Brown / AFP - Getty Images

A woman is reflected in the mirror of a shop selling coin purses with the "Oba Mao" design by entrepreneur Liu Mingjie for sale at his shop on Sept. 23, 2009.Â

Knock down the Great Firewall of China!
Chinese bloggers and Twitter users actually have great expectations for Obama's trip. Their hope is that the so-called Great Firewall of China, the online filtering and surveillance program run by the communist government's Ministry of Public Security, is torn down with a push from the American president. 

"President Obama did stress that he is going to talk about human rights with President Hu, which is a big surprise to a lot of Chinese intellectuals," said Bei Feng, an activist and blogger who was invited by the U.S. Embassy to a briefing ahead of Obama's arrival. Dozens of other bloggers joined the briefing on Thursday and raised many of the issues they are most concerned about. 

Bei is optimistic about the Obama's trip but remains cautious on what Chinese netizens can expect out of it. "A small portion of Chinese intellectuals do believe if President Obama is willing to talk about human rights with China, it may spur China's democracy progress. But in fact, if you rest your hope on a foreign president, it's not practical. It needs our own efforts."

Still, out of all of China's 1.3 billion residents, there is one who may be looking forward to the big arrival most: Mark Obama Ndesandjo. He is Obama's half-brother, a Kenyan businessman who lives in Shenzhen, in southern China, just 15 minutes from Hong Kong.

Beneath the spotlight of both Chinese and Western media, Ndesandjo published his first book in China last week, "From Nairobi to Shenzhen." The semi-autobiographical story is about his personal journey from Kenya to China, with a lengthy account of the allegedly abusive father he shared with Obama. Ndesandjo is reportedly already on his way to Beijing to meet his half-brother.

 TOKYO – When I asked Masako Usui what she thought of Japan's new first lady, the news presenter for the NTV television network started to bang and twist her thumbs together.

"They were returning from a trip abroad, when we saw her thumb-wrestling with her husband through the plane's window," Usui told me, as we stood on the edge of NTV's vast newsroom. "That would never have happened before," she said laughing.

For Japan's media, politics has suddenly become a whole lot more interesting because there has never been a Japanese first lady quite like Miyuki Hatoyama. If there was a premier league for first ladies, she'd be right up beside Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni, the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, except that as far as I know neither of them has ever traveled to Venus.

Pool / Getty Images

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his wife Miyuki Hatoyama at the premier's official residence in Tokyo on Oct. 29. Â

That was the extraordinary claim Hatoyama made in a recent interview. More precisely, she said her spirit had flown there in a UFO, and that it was a beautiful place, very green.

She went on to describe how she "eats the sun" each morning to gain energy, and how she'd met Tom Cruise in a previous life. She said Cruise, who played a samurai knight in the movie The Last Samurai, was Japanese back in the other life.

That's pretty wacky stuff, but you say that at your peril in Tokyo these days. Several people complained to me about the obsession of the foreign media with the first lady's eccentricities (Time Magazine called her "Mrs. Occult"), as if a trip to Venus was a perfectly natural thing to do.

Most Japanese are remarkably unfazed by Hatoyama's cosmic adventures, and see her as a breath of fresh air.

"She's very confident. Her attitude is: 'This is me, accept me for who I am. This is what I do, and if you don't like it, take it or leave it.' But in a very positive way," said Hayami Yu, an actress and singer, who has met the first lady on several occasions.

And that seems to have a broad appeal in a country where first ladies have been traditionally far less visible, and where women are still very poorly represented at the top levels of business and politics.

"In Japan, the man is the man, and the woman is the woman, walking five steps behind," said Jane Yamano, who runs a string of beauty schools and is a friend of the first lady. She says that is changing, albeit too slowly, and that Hatoyama confidence and openness is "inspiring."

VIDEO: First lady adding color to Japanese politics

Hatoyama is used to being center stage, having once been an actress and singer with the Takarazuka Revue, an hugely popular all-female musical theater. She performed with them in the 1960s before heading to California with her first husband, who had a restaurant there. That's where she met Yukio Hatoyama, now Japan's prime minister, who was studying engineering at Stanford.

More recently she described herself as a "life composer," or sort of a lifestyle guru, writing several macro-biotic cooking books. It was in her most recent book, "Very Strange Things I've Encountered," that she first mentioned her trip to Venus in a triangular-shaped UFO. 

"The energy level is just really high," said her friend Jane Yamano. "It just makes you happy, and I think you get a special energy from her."

What also seems to have shocked Japan, but in a positive way, is the first couple's public intimacy, something rarely seen here. They praise each other openly in public, walk hand-in-hand, and actually look like they care.

"She blow-dries his hair in the morning, chooses his necktie, and that's how they start the day," said Yamano. "I think that's wonderful." 

She seems to have transformed her husband's previously rather humdrum image.
 
Will it change broader roles?
On Thursday, via an unscientific poll in Ginza, a glitzy shopping area in Tokyo, the view of Hatoyama was overwhelmingly positive. "She's a straight shooter, and I really like that," said one young woman. "I really admire her for having her own opinions," said another.

"She's really brought something fresh to politics," was the comment from one man. There were a couple of dissenting voices: she's "interesting," said one woman. "Kind of strange," said another.

Hatoyama is certainly in charge, in her own way. But can she, by her example, help more women attain greater representation in Japan's top boardrooms, which remains dismal by the standards of other rich countries?

"The mentality is changing. But it takes time to change in Japan," said Sakie Fukushima, who from her perch at the top of leading executive recruitment company, is in a unique position to judge. A few years back my colleague Tom Brokaw interviewed her about Crown Princess Masako, the Harvard Graduate and Foreign Ministry high-flyer, who married the Crown Prince, and in the view of many saw her personality, career and ultimately her health undermined by the demands of a conservative public life, that never allowed her to be herself.

To Fukushima, the first lady is a welcome relief from traditional roles. "She will certainly have a very positive impact on Japanese women's position and acceptance."

She's certainly brought more color to the drab world of Japanese politics. And if President Barack Obama thought he was arriving in a political world of gray men in gray suits, then the first lady seems determined to prove him wrong. Though it's my guess that interplanetary travel will be kept well out of the conversation at tonight's banquet.

KAKUMA, Kenya – I've been back from my latest trip to Africa for several weeks, but there are two girls I can't get out of my mind: a mature 14-year-old called Nyanuel Noang from Sudan, and an impossibly sweet little 11-year-old named Michu Danabo from Ethiopia.

We met them at the unlikeliest place. While driving through an arid plain in northern Kenya we saw in the distance, in the middle of nowhere, a cluster of low buildings surrounded by razor wire. Was it a prison? An army camp? A food depot?

It turned out to be at school run by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called the "Angelina Jolie Boarding School for Girls." The actress, a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, donated money to help construct the school. But while the money came all the way from Hollywood, the girls came from the Kakuma refugee camp a couple of miles away. 

VIDEO: Girls get a chance to learn at Kenyan school

At the Kakuma camp, about 50,000 forlorn people from Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda are fed by aid agencies that work with the UNHCR. They live in shacks made of local materials like branches, mud, leaves and wood. Water is often available – but not always. Some Somalis have been there since 1991. There are schools, clinics and food depots. The camp offers security, support and comfort. What it cannot give is any hope for the future.

But for the past three years, the brightest of the refugee girls from Kakuma, as well as a few from the local tribes, have been permitted to dream.

A chance to learn
They live in one line of buildings and study in another. The buildings are divided by a dusty, dry field with a few sad-looking, recently planted trees. Here the girls chase each other, sing, dance and act like young girls anywhere, glancing shyly at our handsome producer, Paul Goldman.

The 240 girls are aged 10 to 16 and study math, English, Kiswahili, social studies, science and religious education. They are enthusiastic in their classes, smile, laugh and the teachers are keen to help them.

But there's one problem. Their education ends at age 16. What then? There's no senior school, so these talented, educated young women will likely have to return to their shacks in the camp and resume their traditional roles in life. And that often means making their brothers' beds, helping their mothers cook, marrying as soon as possible, fetching wood and water, and beginning to raise their own families.

Nyanuel appealed for help. She wants to keep studying. If she was not in Angelina Jolie's school, she said, "They would make me marry. I want to be in school." I asked her what she wants to be in the future: "A surgeon."

I asked little Michu the same question: "A mathematics professor. I want to write books."

I keep thinking about them, of how happy they are with their lives as schoolchildren, and what a rude shock life will be when they graduate with their diplomas and their dreams.

More basic needs
Back at the Kakuma refugee camp a 17-year-old refugee girl, Nwele Sala, from Somalia, had a problem of her own.

She was waiting in line to get access to a water pump that was working and she said, "I am begging for water," she said.

"When did you last drink?" I asked.

"Two days ago," she replied.

"How many people are in your home?" I asked. "Ten," she said. "The children need water."

She was clearly next in line to reach the water pump, but it made me wonder to myself, if there was money to give, where should it go? To provide water and food for the hungry and desperate? Or to build a senior school for the students, who are hungry and desperate for knowledge and a future? If there was enough money, both goals could be financed. But apparently there isn't.

For Nyanuel, Michu and Nwele are as drops in the ocean, or maybe more apt in this drought-stricken region, grains of sand in the desert. There are many millions like them: children desperate to feed the body, and the soul.

As we left, all I could say to the girls was: "Good luck."

SAMBURU, Kenya – We were on a five-hour journey from Maralal to Samburu in northern Kenya. It was noon and we asked our driver, Albert, to stop at a beautiful village we were driving past for a cup of tea.

The menu was hand written on the wall of the "Small World Hotel." The local tea is called "chai" and costs ten Kenyan shillings for a cup, or about 15 cents.   

The small village was made up of one main unpaved street with mud shops lining it and straw huts scattered behind them. The town is in the middle of nowhere and the three-year drought here has left most of this region without water, food or tourists.

We ordered three cups of chai and sat on the ground beside the main road. After the very first sip, we all looked at each other, thinking the same thing: It was undrinkable. But by now, what seemed like most of the village's residents had sat down beside us, watching our every move. Could we possibly pour out the liquid in front of the locals?

Krzysztof Galica / NBC News

Paul Goldman, left, and NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher, right, stop for a cup of "chai" tea at the "Small World Hotel" in a small village in northern Kenya.

Albert came over and explained that in this area they combine the tea with hot water, milk and sugar. Lots of sugar. Ever the diplomat, Albert passed the cups to some women who had just arrived. By now I realized why he hadn't ordered a cup for himself.

Everyone in the village was very friendly and welcoming. But this region, once a tourist destination, has become a security risk. The never-ending drought – plus the proximity to Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia – has caused tribes to clash with each other.

The Samburu women wear beautiful bead necklaces with layers upon layers of bright red, blue and yellow colors. All the necklaces tell a story, the colors and design all make up a woman's status and indicating their marital status.

Krzysztof Galica / NBC News

A Samburu woman shows off some of her beautiful necklaces.

The women were very surprised when we expressed an interest in their necklaces. Slowly they realized they might be able to make some money and become very eager to make a sale. The women just unhooked the back of the necklaces and handed them over for us to examine more closely. We bought some as souvenirs. No bargaining was needed – they were just so cheap.

As we left, Albert explained that we might have just helped start up a new business venture among the women of the village. The next car with tourists that stops there might find a small shop and a big smile.

Read more World Blog reports from Kenya:
Kenyan girls given a chance to dream
A window into East African refugee's pain
Continuing Kenyan journey to help others

BERLIN – As Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in many ways this is still a divided city.

It's not a physical divide – little remains of the former wall today. But spend a few days in Berlin and you realize that the city is still split by psychological and economic barriers. 

There is an expression about the "wall in the mind," referring to psychological and social barriers that keep easterners (ossis) and westerners (wessis) separate.

Many West Berliners, for example, say they rarely venture deep into East Berlin even now. Josef Jaffe, who has been an editor for the Die Zeit newspaper his entire career, described how he knows his way around Paris and New York better than around East Berlin.

And in Germany, a nation of newspaper readers, the four biggest East German newspapers and magazines are hardly read in West Berlin.The same goes for the largest West Berlin papers in the East. And therein lies the "wall in the mind."

SLIDESHOW: The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall

Still wrestling with differences
I recently spent a week in Berlin as part of journalism fellowship sponsored by the RIAS Berlin Kommission to study German politics and media. In our meetings with journalists, politicians and academics, the East-West tension was a constant undercurrent.

It was described to us as being in many ways analogous to the American struggle over civil rights. Four decades after the civil rights battles of the 1960s, American society is still wrestling with racial issues, even after an overwhelming majority of voters elected the first African American president. And so it is with the Germans, only 20 years later, struggling with the psychological impact of six decades of division and oppression.

Reunification has been described as Germany's greatest achievement, and so it may be, but it has not been an easy process. Unemployment in the former East Germany is roughly double that in the former West, and for those who do have jobs, incomes are significantly lower.

Many Eastern Germans have had a difficult time assimilating to the West after decades of a controlled economy. As Thomas Habicht, the senior political editor for the national broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg put it, "suddenly after 60 years, the economy mattered again in East Germany."

SLIDESHOW: Germany celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall

High - expectations not necessarily met
A certain amount of disillusionment was perhaps inevitable. Many East Germans hopelessly romanticized daily life in the West. In East Berlin in particular, the proximity to Western culture (and access to Western television, which reached 89 percent of the East Berlin population) also fueled high expectations.

As a result, over the past two decades, strong resentment has developed among former Easterners. One politician we met with described the phenomenon as being like the "arrogant rich uncle versus the resentful poor nephew."

And this resentment has bred contempt. A poll last fall found that 64 percent of former eastern Germans feel like they are treated as second-class citizens. It's even led to a romanticism of their repressive past. In a recent poll, more than one in six former Easterners agreed with the statement: "It would have been better if the Wall had never fallen." 

This East-West divide was also reflected in the recent election in Germany with the surprising popularity of Die Linke, the far left party, made up in part by former East German Communists. Formed only two years ago, Die Linke took more than 10 percent of the vote nationwide.  In Berlin, it won more than 20 percent of the vote, and in some parts of eastern Germany it is the second-biggest party, after the ruling Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/17/german-elections-die-linke-party

It seems that the Die Linke party has been able to exploit the disillusionment that many former East Germans feel. What many now will be watching is if they can shed its image as a "protest party" and figure out a path to real power in the government, through a coalition.

VIDEO: NBC's Tom Brokaw reports on the fall of the wall 20 years later

Much of this discontent comes down to people's pocketbooks. As Jurgen Hofrichter, the director of election research at the Intratest polling firm in Berlin explained – German democracy was imposed from the "top down" in 1945 after World War II.

It was a system of government that Germans had little experience with, and in a large way it was the economic success of the post-war era that helped West Germans accept and embrace democracy. But after reunification, it was a different story – the German economy slowed, unemployment shot up, and economic transition for former East Germans has been especially difficult.

A whole generation of former East Germans lost their jobs. Some haven't worked since.

The real losers in reunification are this middle generation – Germans now in their late 40s and 50s who were born into the GDR, grew up in it and are too young to retire. For them, communism was both the "caring mother" and the "punishing father." It's a generation where a work ethic was not instilled; then after reunification, this generation found itself essentially having to start over.

Will take time
It's not necessarily the same for other generations. The older generation of former Easterners, the pensioners, have adapted better. They have long working histories in the GDR, which count when computing generous German pension programs.

And the younger generation of East Germans – those under 30 – represent the true hope for East Germany, because they are able to adapt and embrace the ways of the Western economy.

In the end, perhaps what matters most is time. As the memory of the wall that savagely divided East and West fades from people's memory, so too may the "wall in the mind."

Click for complete coverage of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

BEIJING – Twenty years after the toppling of the Berlin Wall, another "wall" is facing intense public scrutiny in China.

The so-called Great Firewall of China, the online filtering and surveillance program run by the communist government's Ministry of Public Security, is alive and well and censoring freedom of expression for millions of Chinese.  

But over the past few months, Chinese discontent with the Great Firewall has bubbled over with increasing frequency and fervor.

SLIDESHOW: Celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall

Chinese netizen's ire was recently sparked by the Green Dam censoring software that was proposed last summer and the blocking of popular social media pages like Facebook and Twitter during the Uighur riots in Xinjiang in July. 

The censorship during the Uighur riots caused such consternation online, it sparked one bitter Chinese Twitter user to mournfully tweet that day, "Today, two '140s' were killed in China – 140 people in Xinjiang and 140 character micro-blogging service Twitter."

It is perhaps fitting then that the Great Firewall should find its opposition in another online medium: Twitter.

The most recent incident occurred late in October when organizers for the Culture Project Berlin, a non-profit organization in Germany that promotes art and culture, created an online "Berlin Twitter Wall" where German tweeters were encouraged to share their memories of the tumultuous times surrounding the fall of wall 20 years ago.  

However, when organizers also asked tweeters to write about, "which walls still have to come down to make our world a better place," the global response was sudden and overwhelming.

The site was soon flooded by over a thousand comments from China complaining about the infamous Great Firewall. Chinese netizens, who circumvented the government's usual blocking of Twitter by using proxy servers, had suddenly transformed the online memorial site into a protest against 21st century forms of censorship.

Chinese censors were relatively slow to respond to the swift outpouring of anger, taking a couple days before finally blocking the website hosting the Berlin Twitter Wall. By then though, the damage had been done. Prior to the blocking, Carsten Hein, a director of the project estimated around 1,500 of the around 3,300 comments posted on the page were in Chinese.

Showing the resourcefulness and the doggedness of China's netizens, even after the site was blocked, posters in China were still visiting the website and leaving messages on the Twitter wall.

One user wrote, "Mr. Hu Jintao, Tear Down the Great Firewall!" putting a twist on President Ronald Reagan's famous words to his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 imploring him to "Tear down this wall!"

Another poster, appealed to President Barack Obama to take action during his visit to China later this month writing: "Mr. Obama please ask Mr. Hu to tear down the GFW, insure Chinese people use Internet free."

The outpouring on the Berlin Twitter Wall are representative of how over the past 20 years, the Internet has not only unequivocally changed how the world communicates, but how it perceives freedom of expression.

For China though, perhaps the more interesting storyline is the quiet, but increasingly frequent clashes that occur between two large, disparate groups that make up of China's social, economic and political bedrock: China's youth and its government.

In the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, China internalized the shocking collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and its own scary brush with democracy with the Tiananmen Square protests the same year.

In the past two decades, economic prosperity and the incremental opening of personal freedoms has silenced the calls for greater democratization that was at the center of the 1989 student movement in China. Today's Chinese youths have largely shifted their focus on improving their social and financial condition and are mostly passive about expressing any misgivings they may have with government restrictions on individual freedom. 

To that point, China's public security minister, Meng Jianzhu, recently held a press conference calling for even greater security over the country's Internet network. 

The idea of even tighter control seems shocking when one considers that Internet access in the vast Xinjiang region was effectively cut off for months after the Uighur riots this past summer.

Still, things like the  Berlin Twitter Wall and the outrage over the proposed Green Dam censoring program show that when China's censorship mechanisms impinge on the freedoms now expected by China's youth, the two societal plates push against each other and with increasing frequency, the government is being pushed back slightly. (Examples here and here).

It is likely that today will be just another day here in China and one shouldn't expect mass demonstrations calling for the toppling of China's Great Firewall anytime soon.

But, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the spirit of those heady days still resonates here and burns bright deep behind China's other Great Wall.

Click here for complete coverage of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

LONDON – It gets dark very early in London at this time of year. By five o'clock it's pitch black.

Tonight, though, the sky is lit up with the bright and sparkling explosions of fireworks.

Bonfires blaze in towns and villages across the country.

If you want to know why, you'll need a kid of my generation or older to tell you.

"Remember, remember the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder treason, Should ever be forgot …"

We used to chant this scrap of verse every year.

Nowadays it's Halloween that captures the imagination. But for close to 400 years we've celebrated a quaint little custom here called Guy Fawkes night.

Mike Hewitt / Getty Images

Conor Hewitt, 11, makes light circles with a sparkler during Guy Fawkes Night celebrations in Brighton.Â

Back in 1605 a bunch of conspirators – disgruntled Catholics – decided to try to kill the king and members of parliament because they felt badly treated. They smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar under the House of Lords with a plan to blow the place sky-high.

But the aforementioned Mr. Fawkes got caught red-handed in the early hours of Nov. 5 and, as was the custom back then, got tortured and executed for his trouble.

Londoners were encouraged to celebrate the safe deliverance of the king with bonfires. Then a hundred years or so later someone got the smart idea of putting an effigy of Guy Fawkes on top and burning it. Someone else added fireworks. And so the tradition was born.

As a child in a Lancashire town we used to collect the bonfire wood for weeks, staging friendly raids on neighboring streets to relieve them of their best timber. Building the biggest fire was a matter of pride.

The problem was we lived in narrow streets of terraced houses with only a tiny back lane in between, and – no surprise – no one wanted the fire next to their house. So we used to rush home from school, stack the wood high, and throw on the torch before the neighbors got home from work.

These were great nights, though not for those folk just back from the factory who could only watch as their back gates slowly turned to ashes.

TV was still a rarity and life was lived – surprisingly safely – outside. Many houses had pianos, but they were slowly falling out of fashion and every year one would be dedicated to the flames. It was always the last thing to go – spared till the last minute so that some talented soul could bang out a few, final tunes.

At the edge of the flames we baked potatoes in the smoking ashes and ate them piping hot. There were sausages and cinder toffee, hot tea and toast.

As I write this fire-rockets are screaming into the night behind my office and lighting up the sky.

Guy Fawkes could not have imagined he would never be forgot. Bonfires, fireworks and burning effigies are his legacy. And just occasionally these days, when our politicians let us down, people still remember old Guy, and even speak fondly of him.

MAINZ, Germany – I vividly recall the car journeys I would take as a teenager from Frankfurt to Berlin. In those days, the trip to the isolated city of West Berlin, which was located in the heart of East Germany, required us to take the so-called "transit route" through communist East Germany. It was a bumpy ride in many ways.

There were extensive waits at the Herleshausen border crossing, where grim and often unfriendly East German border guards took our passports and checked them for hours. Once allowed through, we had to travel for more than 200 miles through the communist country on roads that made a clacking sound as you drove over them – making it feel like a journey on old railroad tracks.

Along the roadside we passed East German police, who laid in wait to issue speeding tickets to "foreigners," as it was a quick and easy way to get some cash in the much stronger West German currency.

But that all changed after the collapse of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989.

VIDEO: 20 years later, Wall's fall still being felt

Today, we travel the same route from Frankfurt to Berlin on spanking new highways. And it is difficult to find traces of the former 870 mile long East-West border with its hundreds of watch towers, barbed-wire fences and automatic shooting devices that once divided the two Germanys.

And there are only few signs of the original Berlin Wall, which was fortified with tank barriers, search lights and armed guards patrolling with their dogs.

"If you look at Checkpoint Charlie today, Berlin's famous Allied border crossing, it is really nothing more than a commercialized Disneyland of the Cold War," said Fabian Rueger, a historian and tour guide in Berlin.

The actors in old military uniforms at Checkpoint Charlie and the street vendors selling fake pieces of the wall are surreal images for those who actually grew up during in Cold War times. 

Today, it is mainly my generation and that of my parents, who have vivid and very emotional memories of what it was like to live through the Cold War and the "peaceful revolution" that swept across Eastern Europe and ultimately brought down the internal German border in 1989.

It's created a quandary: How do the different generations reconcile the vast and extreme changes that have altered the country in such a short period of time?

"The last 20 years were dominated by change. Change which came much faster than I expected. We had to learn a lot of new things in a very short time," said Doris Schwanzara-Bennoit, 55, who has lived and worked in Hoyerswerda, a small eastern German town, for most of her life.

After the euphoria faded, East Germans saw their old political system collapse and they were suddenly confronted with the reality of life in a Western market economy. For them, it was a time in which goals and values had to be redefined.

Still, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows that former East Germans overwhelmingly approve of German reunification. However, according to same study, the percentage of East Germans with a "very positive" view of reunification dropped from 45 percent in 1991 to 31 percent in 2009.  And today, many of those living in East Germany believe that unification happened too quickly. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1396/european-opinion-two-decades-after-berlin-wall-fall-communism

"The early 90s were trembling and shaking times for us, as old structures fell apart. My parents lost their jobs and there was a whole period of insecurity," said Katja Tannert, a 31-year-old East German artist, who now lives in Berlin.  

Tannert, who was 11 years old when the wall came down, remembers what life under communist rule was like, but she has very positive memories of her childhood and says she did not feel locked in at the time. "We traveled to Bulgaria and other East Bloc countries twice a year, where I met Dutch people and western Germans. I felt free in those days," she said.

Tannert believes that the fall of the wall came at just the right time in her life. "When, in my teenage years, I started to become interested in the world, in new languages, in new cultures, I was already free to travel and I am very grateful for the opportunities I had," she said.

Still, after travelling the world and living in Berlin's multi-cultural society, Tannert said she lacks the feeling of a real home.

"My hometown near the Polish border is not the place I feel connected to anymore, despite my parents still living there," she said. "Streets were renamed, my old school was torn down and most of my old friends have left."

Approximately 12 percent of the population, an estimated 1.7 million people, moved from the former East Germany since the fall of the wall, mostly as a result of job shortages and a lack of opportunities.

"Both of my children have left Hoyerswerda. My daughter is in Munich and my son in Paris. They have been gone for many years and have no intention [of] returning," said Schwanzara-Bennoit.

The socio-economic decline, combined with the shrinking population as a result of falling birth rates and an aging population, has adversely affected many eastern German cities, like Hoyerswerda which used to be the centers of large East German industries.

Under communist rule, Hoyerswerda had been turned from a small, sleepy town with 6,000 inhabitants into a mining center with a population of 70,000. But since the fall of the wall, which triggered the collapse of the nearby old coal mining industry, Hoyerswerda has lost nearly 40 percent of its population and residents.

"The mood is more depressed than in the old days," said Schwanzara-Bennoit.

"But even though I miss some things, like the close community structures, the solidarity among neighbors and friends, or the job security in former East Germany, I still do not want the old system back," she said.

Click here for complete coverage of the Fall of the Berlin Wall 20 Years Later

HAVANA, Cuba – Cuban diva Omara Portuondo will heat up the stage at the 10th Annual Latin Grammy Awards during a rare U.S. appearance this Thursday.

Dubbed the queen of Cuban vocals, Portuondo will be presenting an award during the televised show and her latest CD, "Gracias," has been nominated in the Best Contemporary Tropical Album category.  

VIDEO: Cuban musicians get U.S. encore

Her appearance at the Las Vegas awards show demonstrates the slow loosening of restrictions on travel between the U.S. and Cuba. 

Portuondo's visit is her first to the United States in five years. Back in 2004, she had to cancel a tour after the Bush administration cracked down on cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba. Under that policy, thousands of Cuban artists and musicians were denied visas to perform in the U.S.

That now seems to be changing. After the Obama administration loosened some travel restrictions for Cuban Americans this past spring, U.S. music promoters quietly began applying for permission to bring Cuban artists stateside.  

During the first 10 months of this year, the State Department issued 5,500 more visas for Cubans to visit the United States than it did during the same period in 2008.  

Now Portuondo's sultry voice, which has entertained audiences in Cuba for over six decades, has another chance to win over American audiences.  Since first performing at Havana's famous Tropicana cabaret back in the 1950s with greats like Nat King Cole, she has accompanied some of the island's most beloved bands from Cuarteto d'Aida and Orquesta Aragon to the Buena Vista Social Club, which introduced her to international audiences.

In addition to Omara, famed conductor Zenaida Romeu is appearing in North Dakota, troubadour Pablo Milanes is in Puerto Rico and band Septeto Nacional is bringing its Cuban rumba to the New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami. Watch the video of the performers in Cuba and look out for their performances in a town near you.