One man's mission to promote peace...one school at a time

by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Book review by Cate Montana

K2, better known to climbers as “The Savage Peak,” is the world’s second highest mountain. Its summit is considered the most difficult to reach of all the mountains on Earth. It’s also situated in one of the world’s most inaccessible of places – the Karakoram range in Pakistan.

In September 1993, climber Greg Mortinson found himself separated from his team after an exhausting, problem-plagued, and ultimately failed summit attempt. At the end of his descent and his strength, he wandered near the tiny village of Korphe. By the time he reached the edges of the village he was surrounded by at least fifty wide-eyed children. No foreigner had been there before, but the nurmadhar, or village chief, stood at the outskirts gate and welcomed him.

The days spent recuperating as an honored guest in Haji Ali’s tiny and primitive, but gracious, household impacted Mortenson deeply. But it was his eventual visit to the village’s school that changed his life.

“Haji Ali led Mortenson up a steep path to a vast open ledge eight hundred feet above the Braldu. The view was exquisite, with the ice giants of the upper Baltoro razored into the blue far above Korphe’s gray rock walls. But Mortenson wasn’t admiring the scenery. He was appalled to see eighty-two children, seventy-eight boys, and the four girls who had the pluck to join them, kneeling on the frosty ground in the open. Haji Ali, avoiding Mortenson’s eyes, said that the village had no school, and the Pakistani government didn’t provide a teacher. A teacher cost the equivalent of one dollar a day, he explained, which was more than the village could afford. So they shared a teacher with the neighboring village of Munjung, and he taught in Korphe three days a week. The rest of the time the children were left alone to practice the lessons he left behind.”

Watching the children scratch multiplication tables in the half-frozen dirt with sticks, studying with no supervision, seeking an education through their own choice and will, on the spot Mortenson made an equally tough commitment. He was not a rich man. His sole possession, aside from his clothes and climbing gear, was his grandmother’s burgundy Buick back in the U.S. But in comparison to these children he was a millionaire. He told Haji Ali he would come back to Korphe and build a school for these children, no matter what.

Three Cups of Tea is the story of Mortenson’s journey as he struggled to fulfill his promise to the children of Korphe, and then, as the desperate circumstances and yet magnificent spirit of the people of the Balti became clear to him, going on to construct numerous village schools throughout the region and into Afghanistan. Three Cups of Tea is also the story of one human being growing beyond his own selfish pursuits to create a better life and a hopeful future for thousands of people less fortunate than he.

Despite all obstacles: an indifferent American population and even death threats against him for working in Islamic countries; despite religious edicts banning his work; despite kidnapping and the ever present threat of the Taliban, to date Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute, which he founded as a 501 (c3) non-profit organization to help administer the work, have built over 58 schools providing education to over 24,000 children, about 14,000 of which are girls.

A stirring, compassionate, and richly detailed story, Three Cups of Tea is an entertaining yet deeply educational read. It brings into sharp focus not only the splendor and harshness of one of the world’s least explored regions, but also the legacy of poverty and lack of education in third world Islamic nations: despair and an endless chain of children abandoned as fodder for terrorism and jihad. Most highly recommended.