Three Cups Of Tea

I went to book club again last night. As I walked to the door the wind blew the snow sideways across the icy cement and I could hear dogs barking. The weather was miserable and after a minute the dogs started to sound like wolves. Whew it was nasty out there. We discussed a book by Greg Mortenson called "Three Cups of Tea." This book is written by a man who graduated from Alexander Ramsey High School - the high school next to my high school. Although he graduated from Ramsey HS and played on the football team, he never really fit in there. He grew up in Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro with his missionary parents. He studied nursing and climbed mountains in his spare time. He attempted to climb K2, the highest mountain in Pakistan, but gave up his attempt to save the life of a foolish fellow climber. He got lost on the way back and was nursed back to health by the folk in a small Pakistan village. He saw the girls there trying to learn in the bitter cold and doing their math problems with a stick in the dirt. He vowed to build them a school. Throughout the book Greg Mortenson isn't your typical guy. He gets lost. He looses his stuff. He's late. He doesn't think things through. He lives in his car. He is footloose and makes hasty decisions. But he is determined. Eventually he does build a school in that poor village in Pakistan in the late 1990's. He goes on to found the Central Asia Institute which builds many more schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson goes out of his way to make sure the girls are educated. He points out that if the boys are educated, they benefit. But if girls are educated, the entire village benefits. He is respectful of the Muslim religion and he learns to shed his "get er done" American ways for the Pakistani villager ways. To really communicate with someone, you need to drink three cups of tea and trust the process. Don't be in such a hurry. The Taliban moves into the area and they start building schools. Much money is brought into the area for these schools that educate only the boys. The teachers are also uneducated and they do not teach the children to read. According the the book, the Taliban teachers don't want their students to actually read the Koran but only to know the Taliban interpretation. In our discussion I learned that Muslim boys who study with the Taliban must have permission from their mothers. That fact gives us another reason to education the girls in the village. The discussion was very thought provoking and the book was good too. Several people in the book club wanted to help Mortenson build more schools. Offspring #1 keeps advising me to be careful with my charity dollars and to spend them wisely. So I looked up the Central Asia Institute on charitynavigator.org. Mortenson's charity only got 2 stars - not a very good rating. But that does make sense because although well intentioned and hard working, he isn't very efficient. On the Central Asia Institute I found another link to an organization called The Girl Effect. This organization has a most amazing and informative interactive web site. You might want to check it out. They are not listed on charity navigator though. If I knew they used their money wisely, I would definitely consider donating to that cause.