Books Read: 10

I have finally finished Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. It is his biography about how he got involved at building schools, especially for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His family were missionaries in Tanzania, building schools and a hospital and later he goes on to become a emergency medic in CA during the 90s and takes the late shifts order to take climbing trips all around the Bay during the day. He manages a trip to Pakistan to climb K2, one of the most difficult mountains to climb. He does this in honor of his sister's death from epileptic seizures, but fails. On his way down he becomes lost and runs into the small village of Korphe, whose children share a teacher with another village and have school outside and use sticks to write in the dirt. Mortenson become inspired to raise money to build a school for Korphe. He talked to a man in Pakistan to figure out how much he would need to build a school and developed a blue print before leaving. When he returns home he begins typing 580 letters via type writer to famous people and organizations. Only one responded, Dr. Jean Hoerni, the man who started the silicon chip and developed most of the silicon valley. He donated enough money for Mortensen to build a school, in addition, a group of students donated pennies to his cause and gave him enough to fly back to Pakistan. He returns and starts getting the supplies he needs, but has many obstacles in his way. Getting the supplies, getting it to this isolated region, and dealing with many other village chiefs who also want schools built trying to steal his supplies. When he does make it the village requests a bridge first in order to make it easier to get in and out of the village. Mortenson helps them build this bridge and after much work and effort he finally builds the school for Korphe. With this development Dr. Hoerni creates the Central Asia Institute and puts Mortenson as the director and they create a board dedicated to building schools in Central Asia, especially for girls. Several other villages in Pakistan put in requests for schools and soon villages in Afghanistan too. Several events such as border war in Afghanistan and 9/11 affect Mortenson's work, but he managed to create hundreds and thousands of schools all over this two countries working with government officials and terrorists. His goal is to promote education and hopefully prevent more schools that create extremists to develop.

This was one of the most inspiring books I have ever read. This man was just interested in building a school for this tiny village and it turned into this amazing path of building schools in a region very hostile towards Americans and create a new and better image of Americans. It also shows a very different perspective of what has going on in Afghanistan after 9/11 and after America got the Taliban out and how America was unable to fulfill its promises of rebuilding Afghanistan. Its a book about an amazing man doing amazing things and people should definitely read it.