Book 7: Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin).
Everyone must read this book. You can't make up a story this good.
Shall I go on? This non-fiction gem is set in Northern Pakistan --border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the famed K2 tests mountain climbers year after year. Greg Mortenson was one such climber, who had to abandon his attempt just 600 meters from the summit. Trying to make his way back to camp he stumbles instead on a tiny Balti village where he is taken care of until he is able to meet up again with his party. In the interim he makes friends. Amazed by these people who live in such an extreme, mountainous place, he is also dismayed to find that the little girls of the village are attending "school" without so much as a roof over their heads. Every time they try to scratch letters in the sand with sticks, a wind blows them away.
Mortenson decides that educating girls is a direct solution to a problem. Where women are the primary caretakers of their children and in many other ways the centre of the community, useful daily skills, such as high altitude medicine and the ability to study, will ensure the survival and then growth of that community. Upon his return to the states, Mortenson writes hundreds of letters (to Tom Brokaw, for one) in an effort to build schools for these girls.
But it's Jean Hoerni who makes the difference: a crotchety Swiss physicist with a heart of gold. Mortenson figures that if the villagers supply the labor, he needs only $12,000 to buy the supplies "in town" (in this case, I think it's Peshawar) and truck them up the mountain passes.
And he is right. The Balti go to work lugging timbers to their building site and soon a school is built, initiating concrete changes in the life of the villagers. With Hoerni’s help, Mortenson starts the Central Asia Institute, and continues to build schools and give talks, slowly gaining a name for himself both in the States and with Pakistan's government.
Everyone must read this book. You can't make up a story this good.
Shall I go on? This non-fiction gem is set in Northern Pakistan --border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the famed K2 tests mountain climbers year after year. Greg Mortenson was one such climber, who had to abandon his attempt just 600 meters from the summit. Trying to make his way back to camp he stumbles instead on a tiny Balti village where he is taken care of until he is able to meet up again with his party. In the interim he makes friends. Amazed by these people who live in such an extreme, mountainous place, he is also dismayed to find that the little girls of the village are attending "school" without so much as a roof over their heads. Every time they try to scratch letters in the sand with sticks, a wind blows them away.
Mortenson decides that educating girls is a direct solution to a problem. Where women are the primary caretakers of their children and in many other ways the centre of the community, useful daily skills, such as high altitude medicine and the ability to study, will ensure the survival and then growth of that community. Upon his return to the states, Mortenson writes hundreds of letters (to Tom Brokaw, for one) in an effort to build schools for these girls.
But it's Jean Hoerni who makes the difference: a crotchety Swiss physicist with a heart of gold. Mortenson figures that if the villagers supply the labor, he needs only $12,000 to buy the supplies "in town" (in this case, I think it's Peshawar) and truck them up the mountain passes.
And he is right. The Balti go to work lugging timbers to their building site and soon a school is built, initiating concrete changes in the life of the villagers. With Hoerni’s help, Mortenson starts the Central Asia Institute, and continues to build schools and give talks, slowly gaining a name for himself both in the States and with Pakistan's government.
Mortenson has some character quirks which make the social undercurrent and behind-the scenes nature of this book very interesting. In fact, David Oliver Relin, the author helping Mortenson to share his story, gets that across very well. He also does justice to a good story with quality writing, something that does not always happen with jointly written books. In the end, Relin cannot help but be won over the "Dr. Greg's" dedication, and this happens to the reader too. Whatever the man's faults, it becomes clear that not a single dollar goes to anything but furthering the cause.
I’ll cut now to the chase and share the best point that this book gets across-- it happens when Mortenson visits the Pentagon in 2002 to brief assorted military personnel. This is what he says to them:
I’ll cut now to the chase and share the best point that this book gets across-- it happens when Mortenson visits the Pentagon in 2002 to brief assorted military personnel. This is what he says to them:
I'm no military expert, and these figures may not be exactly right. But as best I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon Guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"
I think the man has a point. Central Asia Institute is at: www.ikat.org
