May 4, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
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
Exhausted and lost during his descent from a failed attempt in 1993 to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, Greg Mortenson wandered into a Pakistani village seeking food, water, and shelter. This book recounts how he was nursed back to health and repaid the village’s kindness by promising to build a school to educate the 84 children there.
His story, as told to David Oliver Relin, a journalist in Portland, Ore., follows Mr. Mortenson from the icy mountainside of K2 through his recovery and return to the United States, where he hoped to raise enough money to keep his promise.
Selling everything he owned yielded only $2,000, but a class donation from a Wisconsin elementary school of $623 in pennies inspired adults to give. He convinced a Swiss physicist to donate $12,000 to the American Himalayan Foundation for the project, and he finally had enough to build his first school.
In the 13 years since, he has built many more. The Central Asia Institute will educate 24,000 children this year in 55 schools across Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Pakistan. Mr. Mortenson serves as director of the institute and spends several months each year in Asia.
The schools place special emphasis on the education of girls, who traditionally have not attended school. That approach has led Muslim clergymen and fellow Americans who view his work as blasphemy or treason to threaten his life, Mr. Mortenson says.
His dedication to his work prevails over the risks, however. “I don’t want to teach Pakistan’s children to think like Americans,” he says. “I just want them to have a balanced, non-extremist education. That idea is at the very center of what we do.”
Publisher: Viking, 375 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. 10014; (212) 366-2000; http://www.penguinputnam.com; 338 pages; $25.95; ISBN 0-670-03482-7.
