export_ofoct.com

[00:00.70] All women who come here, who don't have legal papers and don't know anyone,

[00:07.61] regardless if they have a high school diploma or even a Ph.D, they start braiding hair until they can do something else.

[00:16.11] I was a shopkeeper in Burkina Faso. I used to buy goods there and sell them to my African sisters here.

[00:22.75] When I would come in their hair salons, it was always busy with clients waiting.

[00:28.59] First, I didn't know how to weave. So, they taught me how to finish the ends.

[00:34.43] At the end of the day, they sometimes gave me 100 dollars to 200 U.S. dollars.

[00:40.36] I thought, 'There's money to be made here.' You look beautiful!

[00:45.93] It's not easy for us. The government is asking us for licenses. Many women hide because they do not have the license.

[01:02.40] It started three years ago, where the African-American salon owners decided to go to the Maryland House of Delegates and have them (not) pass a law that would make the braider go to school for 1500 hours.

[01:12.23] Of course, it didn't make any sense to anybody. We decided to, we walked around and mobilized with phone calls everywhere to everybody to show we could get.

[01:21.00] We presented our case to the delegate. At the end, they were like, 'Oh, we don't know what is that. What is braiding? We don't know what it is.' Because I mean, they really didn't have no idea.

[01:31.89] We decided not to do the bill because it would have foreclosed a lot of economic opportunity for immigrants.

[01:36.93] We were trying to regulate something that we really didn't understand.

[01:39.59] The cultural, the techniques, the safety procedures that are put in, that really make this type of regulation unnecessary based on the conversations that I had at that town hall, which was tremendously enlightening and invigorating, frankly.

[01:54.73] The only place, where we are able to actually come together as African-American Africans, is the braiding shop.

[02:01.90] And the only place where, as Africans, we can actually have the opportunity to educate African-Americans about our culture, about who we are.

[02:10.93] So, by actually doing the braiding, I feel like the braiding shop is a place where people, who come newly from Africa, is a place where they can come and get used to the American culture.