I finished reading the book Three Cups of Tea about four weeks ago. This is the true story of an American mountain climber's commitment to building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Everyone should read this book. Contrary what the cover says, Greg Mortenson didn't write the book and isn't the narrator. I got past that in the first page. After that, I got lost in the story behind his mountain climbing adventures; enjoyed the descriptions of the K2 and other mountains and what the mountaineers go through in climbing trips; compared the conditions in rural Pakistan to what I can relate to; absorbed the descriptions of conditions in Islamabad, Peshawar, and Lahore--places I've heard of in the context of international cricket matches. But then ... the descriptions of Korphe and other small villages sound unimaginably rough and took my breath away even though I'd seen quite far off rural villages in Sri Lanka.
Mortensen's interview on Fresh Air is archived and available for listening and the interview text is on Greg's own site.
Bottom line: I really liked the book. This should be required reading for everyone. Those of us who complain about the modern inconveniences of the Western world should take note of how people try to survive and make a better life for their children in other parts of the world. This book, taken together with the 2005 movie "Why We Fight," I hope, in time would open the eyes of all Americans to looking at the world from a different perspective. I'm waiting to read the sequel, Stones Into Schools.
In my Google Buzz, I said this: I wish I had the money (or the financial backing) and, more importantly, the guts to build and run just a single school in Sri Lanka. I'd make a good Math/Science/English teacher, right? I'd be strict, but, I think, I'd be good at it. :-) Hmmm ... speaking of Tea and schools, I think, I know where to build it: near an up-country tea plantation.
In the NY Times editorial ‘Three Cups of Tea,’ Spilled Nicholas D. Kristof says about the allegations against Mortensen: "The furor over Greg’s work breaks my heart. And the greatest loss will be felt not by those of us whose hero is discredited, nor even by Greg himself, but by countless children in Afghanistan who now won’t get an education after all. But let’s not forget that even if all the allegations turn out to be true, Greg has still built more schools and transformed more children’s lives than you or I ever will."
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