iRelle

Someone lent me a book called Three Cups of Tea the other day. It’s not usually the kind of thing I read unless there’s absolutely nothing else, but it made me realise that perhaps I should be looking up the biography section in the library more often. Joint author and hero of the story, Greg Mortenson, is a man who once climbed K2, the second highest mountain on Earth, but failed to reach the summit. That one failure led to a rapid change of direction for Mortenson and happiness, education and better futures for thousands of children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And it all started with the promise to build a school in a little village he’d never heard of before he stumbled, sick and lost, past the gates.

It’s not a new story – Sir Edmund Hillary founded a school in similar mountainous country, and there are various institutions funded by mountain climbers dotted around the foothills. Where Mortenson veered onto the path less travelled is when he dedicated his whole life to the project. Living out of his car, pulling the night and holiday shifts as a nurse in A&E, working in between to scrape enough funding to build his school. After disappointments and frustrations, Mortenson finally hit the jackpot when he was urged to beard a millionaire in his den and ask for funding. The Central Asia Institute was eventually born, with Greg Mortenson at the head. Sixteen years on, Greg has helped build over 131 schools and educate more than 58,000 children – 48,000 of which are girls.

The most interesting part of the book for me was the attitude that Greg – and his schools – have towards teaching content. An American trying to name up what should and shouldn’t be taught in a Pakistani school sounds like an accident waiting to happen – the clash of culture and religion is hardly an ideal mix. But Mortenson wants to promote peace – his schools revolve around the religions of the areas that they are based in, but don’t take it to the fanatic level that many of the schools funded and populated by leading terrorism groups do. The idea of educating women is that they return to their villages with a wealth of knowledge – about health and peace and literacy – and unlike many of the men, they don’t have to return to a life looking after the crops. Women educated in Mortenson’s schools are turning to the cities for jobs and further education – and the ones that stay with their villages are there to pass their knowledge and desire for education on to the next generation, along with the cultural, historic knowledge that has been a part of their lives for so many centuries.

I can’t do the story justice here – if you see a copy of the book somewhere though, pick it up and learn a lesson about how educating the world’s women can bring about a stronger global peace and less poverty.

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