Louisville Courier (KY)

Friday, March 1, 2008

Greg Mortenson's humanitarian achievements

By L. Elisabeth Beattie - Special to The Courier-Journal

This is a real and remarkable tale that recounts how conscience, courage and commitment can overcome cultural differences, cross-cultural indifference and human greed. It's Greg Mortenson's life story as told to David Oliver Relin, and the collaborative result is a text rich in primary source reminiscences shaped with a storyteller's skill.

Mortenson, a Minnesota-born son of Lutheran missionaries, grew up in Tanzania and in 1993 attempted to climb to the peak of the famed Pakistani mountain, K2. His failure to reach the top resulted in his drifting off course; when he wandered, lost, into Korphe Village in the Karakoram mountains, he didn't realize, at first, that he'd found his life's mission.

"Here, we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything -- even die," said Hazi Ali, Korphe's village chief, to Mortenson. Over countless cups of green tea, the tall American, whom the inhabitants of the remote, impoverished village first viewed more as an alien than as an anomaly, soon assumed the stature of trusted ally.

And when Mortenson vowed to build a school for the local children, none of whom had access to education, he established a reputation not only for himself, but for his homeland, the U.S., for altruistic generosity.

In the 1990s, however, the needs of Korphe's children weren't on most Americans' radar, and when Mortenson returned to the States to raise money for his project, he encountered one roadblock after another. He had no money, no influence and no clue as to how to raise funds or rally the public to his cause. He worked as a trauma nurse, slept either in the backseat of his ancient, inherited Buick, or in hallways of crumbling buildings in crime-infested neighborhoods; and saved every penny he could to construct his school. In libraries he poured over directories of wealthy and famous people and typed dozens of letters pleading for donations until a sympathetic photocopy store manager taught him how to use a computer. Hundreds of requests for funds resulted in a single response -- a check for $100 from NBC News anchor Tom Brokow.

Then one day Mortenson received a call from Jean Hoerni, a Swiss-born scientist residing in Seattle. Hoerni wanted to know how much it would cost Mortenson to build his school. When Mortenson replied, "$12,000," the quirky scientist admonished that he'd better not spend it on drugs or women, but said that a check for the entire amount would soon be in the mail.

It had been a tough year for Mortenson. His father had died of cancer and he himself had lived hand to mouth in his quest to fulfill his promise. But even as Hoerni's gift seemed to answer all his prayers, when Mortenson returned to Korphe to build his school his project was nearly thwarted by corrupt local officials who wanted to use the money for other purposes. And after Mortenson, over many more months and countless more cups of tea negotiated for his school to finally be built, he returned to the States to discover that his girlfriend had abandoned him. She accused him of choosing his cause over her. After a while, he saw that he had.

So too did Hoerni, Mortenson's idiosyncratic supporter, come to understand that he'd backed a conscientious, committed winner, and in 1991 he offered to endow a nonprofit organization, The Central Asia Institute, so that Mortenson could continue the work he'd begun. Since then, Mortenson, who serves as the institute's executive director, has been instrumental in building more than 60 schools in the remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan and in "promoting and providing community-based education, especially for girls."

Three Cups of Tea is an adventure story, a love story (Relin recounts Mortenson's romantic, love-at-first-sight meeting and marriage that occurred soon after he built his first school) and a tale of how a determined individual can -- and continues to -- make a significant difference.

Three Cups of Tea, a blueprint for how men and women with tenacity and conviction can help reconfigure the planet, is a testament worth reading.

L. Elisabeth Beattie is a Louisville writer and reviewer.

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