Three Cups of Tea

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.

I just finished a wonderful book called Three Cups of Tea. It is the story of Greg Mortenson, a man who has built fifty-five schools, especially for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

There are many facts that make this a remarkable story.

In 1993 Greg Mortenson failed to reach his goal of climbing K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. The attempt to scale the peak left him in poor health and the people of a small village in Pakistan nursed him back to health. In return for their kindness, he promised to build them a school.

When Mortenson returned to the United States from Pakistan with the dream of constructing one school, few would have given him much hope. Since his return was delayed, he was fired from his job as a nurse. He didn’t have a home. How could he hope to build a school when he had very little money to look after his basic needs?

This didn’t stop him. He kept putting bread on the water, hoping that one fish would eventually bite. And it did.

Nothing stopped him - not being kidnapped, not being branded as somebody who was trying to convert Muslims to Christianity (which is not true). Nothing would prevent him from keeping the promise he had made.

Problems were meant to be conquered. For example, when he found out that he couldn’t get the materials for his first school across the valley, he built a bridge.

He just kept pushing on where others would have given up.

As an American in Pakistan, especially after the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he had many hurdles to jump to gain the peoples’ trust. He overcame them through his honesty and the quality of his character. Many declared that he practised Muslim values more than those who were against him.

I also learned that radical Saudi Arabians are funding extremist schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While the graduates of these schools often become terrorists, the root of the problem is in Saudi Arabia. I wonder why the western world doesn’t put more pressure on the source?

But I learned a more valuable lesson from Brigadier General Bashir Baz, a member of Pakistan’s armed forces. He said: “Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot you at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength. In America’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.”

Greg Mortenson is fighting terror with books and by building schools.

For more information on what he is doing, you can go to his organization’s website at www.ikat.org.