Climber turns to raise schools, education in Pakistan
It’s a part of the world where Americans are often mistrusted, even hated — but not Greg Mortenson, a 41-year-old resident of Montana whose life’s work is to build schools in remote villages of Pakistan’s mountain valleys.
Mortenson traces his passion for improving the education of the Balti people to his 1993 expedition to climb K2, the world’s second-highest mountain.
After climbing to 27,200 feet, about a thousand feet below the summit , Mortenson fled for his life, physically exhausted and emotionally wasted. Two porters from the expedition helped nurture him back to health by feeding him warm goat’s milk.
During his stay in his friends’ village, he asked to see the local school. His friends took him to an apricot orchard, where 80 children sat in the dirt beneath the shade of the trees. The village was so poor it couldn’t hire a teacher at the going rate of $1 per day.
“I vowed I’d help them raise money for teachers’ salaries,” said Mortenson, who will be in Portland next Wednesday to discuss his work in Asia. “A lot of Westerners had made false promises before, but nobody ever followed through. That was what was different about me.”
Since he began his work, Mortenson has build nine school buildings in four valleys and financed 14 teachers. He has also built a steel cable suspension bridge across a river so students could reach school, a sand filter system to deliver potable water and instruction in vocational and reading skills to adults.
Mortenson said he can build a school for $12,000, half the price of a local government contractor and a quarter of what the World Bank would spend on a similar project.
“I require matching donations of whatever resources a village can offer,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s sand, wood, sweat equity or land.”
A politically volatile area, rural Pakistan is a breeding ground for terrorists who share anti-American sentiment. “Illiterate young boys often wind up in rebel camps,” Mortenson said. “When we increase literacy, we substantially reduce tensions.” His work already is making a difference.
I think it’s pretty remarkable, said Dr. Louis Reichardt of San Francisco, the first American to climb K2 and Mount Everest. “He’s working in an area with people who are intrinsically suspicious of Western influence.
He’s won the trust of the local clergy and has built schools for both sexes. It took a high level of diplomacy and a tremendous commitment to devote his life to this. There had been no previous private Western aid project in this area.”
A trauma nurse by training, Mortenson realized his dream was possible after meeting Jean Hoerni, a Swiss scientist who was instrumental in the development of the semi-conductor industry.
Before he died, Hoerni established the Central Asia Institute as a non-profit organization, made Mortenson the director and endowed it to pay the equivalent of a nurse’s salary to Mortenson, who raises money from grants and lectures to build schools in Pakistan.
Mortenson spends half of each year in Pakistan and the other half in Montana. He is married to Tara Bishop, daughter of Barry Bishop, one of the first Americans who reached summit Mt Everest’s in 1963.
You can reach Terry Richard at 221-8222 or by email at terryrichard@news.oregonian.com
Copyright 1999, Oregon Live ®
