Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School At A Time
Oct 10, 2008
The title of the book, Three Cups of Tea, comes from a Balti proverb: The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family. The process of getting to know the ground rules in tribal societies takes time. It took Greg Mortenson six years to build the first school in the remote mountains of Baltistan. That was in 1996. In 2008 he had built over 80 schools.
How It All Started
In 1993 Greg Mortenson stumbled into an impoverished village in the mountains of Western Pakistan after a failed attempt to climb K2, the second-highest mountain on earth. The village people were kind to him. Mortenson was deeply impressed when he saw hundreds of irrigation channels that were maintained by hand to divert water from glaciers toward their fields. He saw how close they lived to hunger, but they slaughtered one of their precious big rams to share a meal with him. Every scrap of meat was torn from the bones of the skinny animal and the marrow stripped out of the bones.
The Village Has No School
Mortenson realized that the village had no school building. Eighty children sat on the frosty ground in the open every morning, waiting for a teacher they shared with a neighboring town. Most of the money that reached the isolated mountains from the capital Islamabad went to the Pakistani army. Education was not among the priorities. As Greg Mortenson said goodbye to the village elders, he made a promise that would change his life: "I'm going to build you a school."
A Quest Against All Odds
Upon his return to the U.S., Mortenson's goal was to raise money for a school. He took a job in a hospital emergency room and lived out of his car for a while to save money. He started his fundraising campaign with a typewriter. The first 580 letters to possible sponsors yielded $100 from Tom Brokaw. It took three years to raise the $12,000 needed for the school. Two years into his quest. Mortenson had made enough noise that he was contacted by Dr. Jean Hoerni, a Swiss physicist and fellow mountaineer who wanted to sponsor a humanitarian effort.
Other Villages Ask For Schools
It took three more years until Dr. Jean Hoerni, who was dying of cancer, held the photo of the finished school in his hands. In 1996, Hoerni established Central Asia Institute, and appointed Mortenson as the director. The institute's mission is to support community-based education, especially for girls in the remote mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three Cups of Tea tells the story of the difficulties Mortenson had to overcome in order to persevere. He survived an armed kidnapping, firefights with Afghan warlords, endured CIA investigations and received hate mail from fellow Americans after 9/11 for helping Muslims.
Local Communities Initiate Projects
The philosophy to empower the local people through their own initiative is at the heart of all CAI programs. It is important to listen and learn from the local leaders, rather than impose judgment from an outsider's perspective. US military commanders in Afghanistan have contacted Greg Mortenson to learn about his ways of communicating and building relationships.
Educating Girls Pays Off
While boys often leave for the cities after they finish school, girls remain in the village and pass on their knowledge. Education is one way to change the tradition of child marriage and to create new opportunities. Part of the curriculum are classes on hygiene, sanitation and nutrition. Investment in girls' education is the single most effective way to reduce poverty. John Wood, founder of the non-profit Room to Read, arrived at the same conclusion. He left an executive position at Microsoft to bring books to schoolchildren in Nepal and Vietnam.
Spreading the Message
John Wood and Greg Mortenson have tight speaking schedules: they speak at college campuses, at the Air Force Academy, to feminist groups, to farming communities in the Midwest and at Republican prayer breakfasts.Their message is consistent: education is the only way to give hope to the next generation and break the cycle of violence and terrorism
Greg Mortenson received Pakistan’s highest civilian award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (The Star of Pakistan), in an Islamabad civil ceremony on March 23rd, 2009.
Mortenson, Greg and Relin, David Oliver: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time, New York, 2006.
Another fascinating story of fighting poverty:
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
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