3 Cups of Tea - by Greg Mortenson

This is a truly inspirational book, proving the ignorance is our true enemy.

Greg Mortenson set out in 1995 to climb the world's highest peak - K2. He failed on that endeavor but what he accomplished because of where that failure brought him was something far beyond any mountain climb. After getting lost in the Pakistan wilderness, Greg Mortinson found himself in the unfamiliar village of Korphe; a village not even on his map. This village treated him as one of their own and after seeing what they had and didn't have, he made them a promise. He would return one day and build them a school. The people of this region are used to foreigners making promises they don't keep so they were not surprised by this promise but they were surprised when Greg returned less than 2 years later to fulfill his promise.

In the time that fell between Greg tried anything he could think of to raise the $12,000 his research determined it would take to build the school for Korphe. He wrote letters to any person he would think to write to. In the end, his first donation came not from those letters but from other children, after his mother, a school principal, invited him to speak to her students. Those children, on their own started a campaign to donate just their pennies to Greg's cause, raising over $600. Eventually, he found other donors, one specifically who sponsored the bulk of Greg's endeavors which eventually expanded beyond just a school. When he returned to Korphe the village leaders informed him that before a school could be built they needed a bridge (how else would you get all the supplies to their village). In the meantime, he had several other villages fighting for those supplies and for his help.

It took him about 4 years from his original promise to finally get that first school built. But, after doing so, his original benefactor determined that this is what Greg should be doing and chose to make a difference with his own life by providing the funds to see that this work continued. In the years that followed Greg built many more schools, provided women's services, medical services, plumbing and just about anything the various communities of Pakistan needed through his foundation, the Central Asia Institute.

He saw first hand the changes that were occurring in Pakistan as the Taliban poised to take over and he was in Pakistan when the World Trade towers were attacked. While other ignorant Americans were putting bumper stickers on their cars that read "Kill them all, let Allah sort them out", Greg was fighting terrorism by returning to Pakistan and building more schools. He continued even as he saw his efforts being over-shadowed by the money that the Taliban was bringing into Pakistan by the suitcase full, and by the schools and maddrassas that they were building to teach, not language, math and science but extremism and war. While the American government was promises to rebuild the damage we had done in Pakistan, he was actively doing it.

As American's it is easy for us to think if they want change they should do it themselves, but through Greg Mortenson's story you see a different side of the Muslim people. A people who have been ignored by their own government, small villages so far away from their government that the government doesn't bother. It's not that these people don't want more it's that they have not had access to it. To think that $12,000 could build a school for an entire village and that just $100 could pay for the teachers for that school for a year. We as American's take so much for granted, our price to live is so high here and all these people really want is the basics of life, the things that we take for granted. This book really makes you think about those people and what they are struggling through. You realize where this war came from and how it came about and how many more people are suffering that we don't even think about because we just lump them all together as bad people.

We need many more Greg Mortenson's in the world; people who will step up and say that yes one person can make a difference IF THEY CHOOSE TO DO SO. It's easy to keep walking and pass by a person in need and think "it's someone else's job" or "if they want change they should just make it happen". It's not easy to stop and put out your hand and lift someone in need up. It doesn't matter if that someone in need is a school child in Pakistan or a your neighbor, or a stranger on the street. Sometimes the smallest thing can mean a lot, even when you think it's nothing or not worth bothering. We consider our own needs so much more important than someone else's, yet someone like Greg Mortenson and his family can make such huge sacrifices to help others. This book leaves you asking not "can I do something to help?" but "What can I do to help?" and "How can I not help, knowing what I know now."