Personally speaking, to me, a book like Three Cups of Tea is more inspiring than many a self-help tomes publicised as motivational best sellers. Inspirations come from real-life heroes like Greg Mortenson and his supporters. The book can be summed up in the single-sentenced subtitle: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time. This is an undeniably convincing account of the difference one person can make in his own small (in the global sense), but highly momentous manner.
What has become Mortenson’s mission started simply as his way to thank the man, Haji Ali, the nurmadhar of Korphe, and the villagers, who saved his life. Being welcomed by Haji Ali, who eventually became Mortenson’s mentor, he learnt the meaning of the Baltistan proverb, which becomes the central theme of the book. "The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger, the second time you are an honoured guest, and the third time you become family."
On a failed 1993 expedition to climb K2 to honour the memory of his sister Christa, who had died of epilepsy at 23, Mortenson, a nurse in California, stumbles upon a remote mountain village of Korphe in Baltistan in Pakistan’s Karakoram Range. He is nursed, nurtured and cared for by total strangers who he notes have barely anything for their own survival, nor does he understand their language, yet they rescue him from near death.
During his recuperation the American mountaineer watches 82 students – 78 boys and four girls – sitting out in the open being taught three days a week. With no books or teaching aids, the children literally scratch their lessons in the dirt, or the fortunate few who own slates, write on them with sticks dipped in mud. The only teacher they have is shared with three neighbouring villages. Mortenson learns that like Korphe there are hundreds of villages with no schools.
No stranger to living in developing nations and among the underprivileged, as Mortenson had been raised by his missionary parents in Tanzania, he is also familiar with dealing with alien cultures. This is all the experience he is backed by. And immense fortitude. After his promise to build a five-room school to educate a hundred students up to fifth grade in Korphe, an almost penniless Mortenson returns to California to raise the US$12,000 he had estimated the project would cost.
His resolve is obvious when he diligently types letter after letter on an obsolete typewriter till he encounters Kishwar Syed, a Pakistani, who runs the Lazer Image shop. Discovering what he wanted to do Syed not only taught the American how to use a computer but became involved in the movement to educate children in his country of origin. Together they sent out 580 appeals for funds – but the response was not at all encouraging.
Mortenson recalls, “Someone from Pakistan helping me become computer literate so I could help Pakistani kids get literate.”
One day at the hospital he worked in, the nurse receives a message to contact Dr. Jean Hoerni, an elderly wealthy physicist and mountain climber who learns about Mortenson's efforts through an article in the American Himalayan Foundation newsletter. Hoerni, during his mountain climbing had become aware of the harsh life of the people in the mountainous region of Pakistan. Mortenson’s meeting with him in Seattle led to the gentleman, who not only offered to fund the first school, but later became one of the prime donors of Central Asia Institute (CAI – www.ikat.com) which was founded in 1996.
There are numerous memorable incidents of the people Mortenson encounters and many of whom have since continued on this journey with him. At the top is Haji Ali, who upon showing his beautiful Koran to Mortenson, admits that for him the greatest sadness was not being able to read it, and said “I’ll do anything so that the children of this village never have to know this feeling.”
Mortenson found this illiterate man who had hardly every left his village Korphe in Karakoram among one of the wisest men he had ever met.
There were countless others such as the commendable support he got from the village’s religious leader Sher Takhi who despite having had polio as a child led by example by carrying the first load of building material up the mountain. And holy men were not supposed to perform any laborious tasks!
Another moment is the show of a range of emotions – immense pride, joy, relief, gratitude and childlike glee – when on 10 December 1996 Mortenson, Twaha (Haji Ali’s son) and the construction crew hammered in the final nail to complete the first school at Korphe.
Then followed demands by the women that led to the setting up of the Korphe Women’s Vocational Centre where they gathered every afternoon to convert their skills like weaving and stitching into revenue-generating and then decided on setting vocational centres where ever a school was built.
And again, with his wife Tara’s brother Brent Bishop, Mortenson organised Pakistan’s first ever porter-training programme – the Karakoram Porter Training and Environmental Institute.
There is the chance visit to the Korphe School by Julia Bergman, Dr Hoerni’s wife Jennifer Wilson’s cousin. Inspired by what she saw Bergman along with Wilson became an active member of CAI.
And in a hostile Pakistan and Afghanistan post-911, there was Syed Abbas who complimented Mortenson with “When these two Christian men, Dr Greg Sahib and Mr. George (McCown) have come halfway around the world to show our Muslim children the light of education, why have we not been able to bring education to our children on our own?”
But it has not been easy building these 53 schools. Mortenson faces a mountain of daunting challenges – the most critical of which being the initial fund raising. Kudos to him for not only surmounting cultural and language differences, but taking a fatwa issued against him from enraged mullahs in its stride. Next, not only did he survive eight days in captivity after he was kidnapped, he made friends with some Talibans. On the personal front were long spells of separation from his wife Tara and children Amira and Khyber – and subsequently their wholehearted support of him and his work.
Perhaps among Mortenson’s greatest moments of pride could be upon seeing Jahan, grand daughter of Haji Ali and Twaha’s daughter, whom he first encountered when she was seven-years old, on her way to studying to fulfill her ambition to become a doctor.
One day she proclaimed in front of him and the village elders, “I want to become a very famous woman in this area. I want to be a … Superlady.”
And Jahan remembers, “When I was a little sort of girl and I would see a gentleman or lady with good clean clothes, I would run away and hide my face. But after I graduated from the Korphe School I felt a big change in my life. I felt I was clear and clean and could go before anybody and discuss anything.”
Yes, Mortenson has brought about such a startling change in the lives of, and instilled confidence in, many of the young ones he has provided education for over the past decade.
Three Cups of Tea – One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin © 2006
Penguin Books
