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‘Three Cups of Tea’
Author takes a stand in
Pakistan, brings his story to Hood River
Photo courtesy of Greg
Mortenson
Greg Mortenson poses in December with students from the Khanday
School, in the Hushe Valley in remote northeastern Pakistan. The
school is one of 55 that Mortenson and his nonprofit
organization, the Central Asia Institute, have built in Pakistan
and Afghanistan over the past decade. |
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By JANET COOK
News staff writer
January 31, 2007
If you read one book this year, make it Greg
Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea” (written with David Oliver Relin).
If you go to one community event, see Greg Mortenson when he comes to Hood
River Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Columbia Center for the Arts.
I’m not in the habit of making blanket statements, but Mortenson’s work
(which the book is about) is arguably one of the most important actions
happening in the fight against terrorism, and it’s also some of the most
inspiring stuff you’ll come across anytime soon.
In 1993, mountaineer Mortenson literally stumbled into a remote village in
northern Pakistan after a failed attempt to climb K2, the world’s second
highest peak. The climb had nearly killed him, and he became disoriented
and got separated from his guide on his descent through the harsh
glaciered valleys of the Karakoram on the long journey back to
civilization.
The villagers of Korphe took him in and nursed him back to health over the
course of a couple of months. As he regained his strength and grew close
to the villagers who had saved him, he was astounded to learn that the
village children had no school or permanent teacher — a “lesson” consisted
of the children scratching out their multiplication tables with sticks in
a dirt field.
Mortenson vowed to return and build them a school. And he did. It wasn’t
that simple, of course; it took three years, months of living out of his
car while he scraped money together working as a nurse, multiple trips to
Pakistan and much negotiating in a country where deals are made while
drinking endless cups of tea — not to mention transporting loads of
building supplies hundreds of miles into some of the most remote and
forbidding territory on earth.
Mortenson completed the school in December 1996 and had found his calling.
With a lot of tenacity and some key donations, he founded the Central Asia
Institute from his home in Bozeman, Mont., and over the past decade, he
has built 55 schools in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan — the breeding
ground for the Taliban. This year, the schools will educate 24,000
children.
Mortenson has endured threats to his life — from his fellow Americans as
well as Islamic extremists — cleric orders known as fatwehs issued against
him and a kidnapping by armed Pakistani tribesmen who held him hostage for
eight days (all of which are recounted in the book, which is hard to put
down despite its sometimes overwrought prose).
But he has been embraced by thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis, and
continually gets more and more requests for schools, even in the most
desolate Taliban-controlled areas where parents are threatened for even
wanting their children to become educated. In many places where he and his
CAI work, they are the only foreign aid group present.
Mortenson’s book was published a year ago, and it’s been slowly but
steadily percolating into the national consciousness ever since. Between
lengthy stints in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mortenson has been on a
whirlwind of book talks around the country — all while being a husband and
a father to two small children back in Bozeman.
It is to the benefit of all that, when Mortenson’s book ends, his story
continues. |
