Three Cups of Tea

Every year at work, we read a book either as an all-staff or in small groups. This year we each picked from a variety of offerings to read over break and discuss when we got back. Based on back-cover summary, I chose Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations...One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. The book is about Mortenson specifically, who co-founded the Central Asia Institute with northwest scientist Jean Hoerni. Mortenson was a climber who failed to summit K2 and wandered accidentally into the Pakistani village of Korphe. There he was that the students would gather for school outdoors because the government had not provided the town with a school building. Three days a week the children had no teacher becuase they had to share one with another town. The town couldn't afford to pay the teacher his own salary -- of $1 a week. Girls were often excluded from this education. So Mortenson went back to the states, gave up climbing, and tried to find a donor to provide the $12,000 needed to build a school for Korphe. Some 300-pages detail Mortenson's education in Pakistani and Islamic culture and his successes and many setbacks in buildling schools and, later, vocational centers, health clinics, and more around Pakistan. Late in the book Mortenson enters post-invasion Afghanistan to begin building schools there.

The book is inspiring, yes. The writing is sometimes a bit slow and dense, but there's enough dialogue to through it. Mortenson is problematic as a director for the institute, and the author does give his critics an opportunity to say their peace. The thing that I liked most about the book, though, beyond what great work is happening to provide education to girls, is that I learned so much about Pakistan, Afghanistan, the history of the region, and the events on and around 9/11 and after, especially the hunt of Bin Laden.

If you are at all interested in climbing, central Asia, the Islamic religion, the wars and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq or Pakistan and India, then pick this book up.