Philippine Daily Inquirer (Manila, Philippines)

Philippine Daily Inquirer (Manila, Philippines)

09/02/2007

Turning stones into schools

By Queena Lee-Chua

MANILA, Philippines – In 1993, after failing to reach the top of K2, the world’s second highest peak, US mountaineer Greg Mortenson stumbled upon Korphe, an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. The villagers, led by their chief Haji Ali, welcomed the ailing Mortenson and, with sizzling cups of tea, nursed him back to health. Mortenson promised to return to build a school for their children.

But Mortenson did not have money. An emergency-room nurse, he worked irregular shifts so he could do climbing in his spare time. Living from paycheck to paycheck, he slept in his old car at night.

Mortenson wrote 580 letters to politicians, movie stars, foundations. Six months later, all he received was a hundred-dollar donation from news anchor Tom Brokaw. But a climber friend read Brokaw’s note of encouragement and decided to write a magazine article about the project.

When Jean Hoerni, a fellow mountaineer and a physicist, read the article, he decided to help. The cost of the school, Hoerni learned, was only US $12,000.

Three cups of tea

Mortenson returned to Pakistan and encountered problems—sly contractors, dangerous roads, uncooperative leaders. But the open-hearted and generous Mortenson made life-long friends, who became indispensable in his task. Mountain porters helped carry building materials into the most inhospitable terrain. A taxi driver sold his cab and became a dedicated assistant. Former Taliban fighters turned away from violence and helped him in his mission of peace. Most of all, they stopped supporting the oppression of women and started building schools for girls.

To inaugurate the project, Mortenson had tea for the third time with Haji Ali. “The first time you share tea with us, 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, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die.”

“Three Cups of Tea: Building Peace One School at a Time” is Mortenson’s book (written with journalist David Oliver Relin) about how he became part of a Pakistani family and community, and how he built not just one, but 55 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the next decade.

Inspirational and heart-warming, the book is a timely reminder of what it takes to achieve genuine peace today: education.

When a landslide cut off jeeps carrying wood for a school, the men of Korphe walked all night, clapping and singing, to aid Mortenson and his team. At the front of the line was a holy man.

Mortenson wrote, “The holy men of the villages aren’t supposed to degrade themselves with physical labor. But he wouldn’t back down, and he led our column of 35 men carrying roof beams all the way, all 18 miles to Korphe. He had polio as a child, and he walked with a limp, so it must have been agony for him. But he led us up the Braldu Valley, grinning under his load. It was this conservative mullah’s way of showing his support for educating all the children of Korphe, even the girls.”

At the end of the day, chief Ali showed his beloved Koran to Mortenson. “I can’t read it,” Ali said. “I can’t read anything. This is the greatest sadness in 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.”

Peace in our time

“Three Cups of Tea” is also a tale of adventure, with perilous roads to traverse and border guards to pacify. After the success of the Korphe school, and with financial support from Hoerni, Mortenson returned many more times to dangerous places, in the midst of civil war and bombings.

Mortenson survived close calls in Central Asia, but he also did not have an easy time at home in USA. After 9/11, the US government declared its “war on terror,” and Mortenson was interrogated by the CIA. He faced U.S. government skepticism. While talking in the Capitol about the project, a Republican congressman interjected that US security, not Afghan schools, was the most important need of the moment. Here was what Mortenson had to say:

“I don’t do what I do to fight terror. I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is perhaps eighth on my list of priorities. But working over there, I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren’t being offered a bright enough future where they have a reason to choose life over death.”

To the Pentagon, he gave this message: “As best as I can tell, we’ve launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Take the cost of one missile tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, about US $840,000. For that much money, you can build dozens of schools that can provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced non-extremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?”

Far too much dying

Mortenson, who many people hope will win the Nobel Peace Prize, remained undeterred despite the hostile reactions. As his work spread, people began sending donations to the Institute. In one of his later trips, Mortenson sought the support of a powerful tribal leader, Commandhan Sadhar Khan.

“We fought with Americans, here in these mountains, against the Russians,” said Khan. “And though we heard many promises, they never returned to help us when the dying was done.”

“There has been far too much dying in these hills,” Khan continued. “Every rock, every boulder that you see before you is one of my martyrs who sacrificed their lives fighting the Russians and the Taliban. Now we must make their sacrifice worthwhile. We must turn these stones into schools.”

For more information on Mortenson’s project, visit www.threecupsoftea.com “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission To Promote Peace…One School At A Time” (Penguin, 2007) is available in selected National Book Store branches.

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