” “I can’t read it…I can’t read anything. This is the greatest sadness of my life. I’ll do anything so the children of my village never have to know this feeling. I’ll pay any price so they have the education they deserve.” “
Three Cups Of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, page 153
An old man, the head of his small, impovershed village in Baltistan (a region in northern Pakistan in the Karakoram Range of the Himalayans) speaks these words to Greg Mortenson, an American nurse and mountain climber after the completion of a small school. These words, according to Mortenson, along with Haji Ali’s willing sacrifices for the building of that school and his bedrock common sense, make him the wisest man Mortenson had ever met.
Of course, Mortenson is possibly a contender for the title. His idea is simple – children belong in school. Not revolutionary, true, but few people spend years of their life in poor Islamic communities, building schools dedicated to ensuring that the children of these small villages, especially girls, have a place to study. Period. Build schools, make sure everyone including girls can attend, and make sure what they learn is balanced, and the same ciriculum that the government sets for the public schools.
It took Mortenson three years and several setbacks to build that first school. After that, with the establishment of the Central Asia Institute, he built another fifty-five – all since 1996. In the process, he spent months at a time in Pakistan, travelled to Afganistan’s refugee camps, witnessed the aftermath of 9/11 in a Muslim country, overcame through Islamic law two fatwas, and touched the lives of tens of thousands of people.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I can’t descibe how good it is and why. It is. Try it. If you do, and you don’t find it a good book with a powerful, humanitarian message about a man who surely will one day with the Nobel Peace – I want to hear about it and why. But love it or hate it – read the book.
