Greg Mortenson

In 1993, American mountaineer Greg Mortenson decided to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain in Pakistan’s remote Karakoram Range to honour his sister Christa, who had died of epilepsy.

After 78 days on the mountain, Mortenson had missed his own chance to summit after helping rescue a stricken fellow climber. Exhausted, emaciated and emotionally drained, he became separated from his teammates on the 100-km trek back to the nearest town, and stumbled into the uncharted village of Korphe. As the ethnic Balti villagers nursed him back to health, Mortenson witnessed a scene that would redefine his life.

“I saw 84 children sitting in the dirt, trying to learn their lessons and scratching in the sand with sticks,” Mortenson recalled recently from his home in Bozeman, Montana. “There were 79 boys and five girls, and they were so keen to learn. I just had this eureka moment — I hadn’t reached the summit, but I could help here in this village.”

He would build them a school.

Mortenson wrote 580 letters to wealthy celebrities to raise the requisite $12,000. His only response came from news anchor Tom Brokaw, with a $100 cheque. Mortenson applied for 16 grants, none successfully. He sold his climbing gear and his grandfather’s Buick that had been his home for 18 months.

Finally, a short item in the American Himalayan Foundation newsletter intrigued Dr. Jean Hoerni, a Swiss-born physicist, inventor, former climber and multi-millionaire, who donated $12,000.

Mortenson returned to Pakistan, and, aided by his $2/night hotel’s watchman, spent the next few weeks purchasing building supplies and consuming countless cups of tea throughout the bargaining process.

He traveled up the notoriously fearsome Karakoram Highway aboard a 1940s-era Bedford truck and stashed the materials in Skardu while carrying on to Korphe — eight bouncy hours further by jeep. Cramming his six-foot, four frame into a fruit crate suspended by a 350-foot cable over the turbulent Braldu River, Mortenson reached the opposite shore.

“They were shocked, they couldn’t believe I’d come back,” Mortenson said.

“Then they told me I’d made a couple of mistakes — first you don’t start building in late fall, and second, they would first need a bridge over the Braldu.”

His lessons were just beginning.

Having gown up in Tanzania until he was 15, where his father founded Kilimanjaro Medical Center and his mother started the Moshi International School, Mortenson felt at home among the Balti villagers and they welcomed him as family. He stayed the winter and learned the Balti language.

Back in the U.S., Hoerni wrote another cheque and Mortenson returned to Korphe to get the 284-foot bridge built — by the local villagers.

One of numerous stories in his book, Three Cups of Tea, written with journalist David Oliver Relin and which Mortenson will share at the 2006 Banff Mountain Book Festival, the Herculean effort astounded him, as 10 men carried each of the five 800-pound cable coils.

While attempting to micromanage the project, Mortenson learned his biggest lesson when a village elder told him to, “sit down, shut up and let us do the work.

“They have more to teach us than we can ever learn from them, and than we can ever teach them,” Mortenson said.

Now, after 31 trips over 13 years, totalling 60 months spent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mortenson’s non-profit Central Asia Institute has built 55 schools, helping educate 22,000 children, some of whom walk up to three hours a day to attend classes. A committee of elders guides each project, the community matches funds with equal amounts of labour and natural resources and the teachers are locals.

His priority is educating girls, which accomplishes three things — reduces population explosion; reduces infant mortality; and significantly improves basic health and quality of life in a region where one of three babies born alive doesn’t reach its first birthday, and where the literacy rate is about three per cent.

“By educating girls, I don’t mean not educating boys,” Mortenson explained.

An educated girl however, is more likely to return to her village and pass her knowledge on. An educated mother is less likely to support her son in terror activities — since a man must gain his mother’s permission before embarking on jihad — holy war. And a literate boy is less likely to be recruited into Taliban-run Madrassas, which encourage terrorist activities.

Mortenson’s own story is a bigger adventure than any climb. He speaks Balti, Farsi and Urdu, in addition to Swahili, which he learned as a child. He spends seven months a year raising two children with his wife Tara. The hardest part, he said, is being away from his family the other five months.

He’s hunted ibex with villagers, sleeping in caves. He survived a firefight between Afghan opium smugglers. He’s had two separate fatawas issued against him to banish him from Pakistan for educating girls — both rescinded by high-level mullahs. While venturing into Afghanistan without the company of any locals, he was kidnapped and held captive in a small dark room for eight days. In the U.S., he’s received death threats, and been “debriefed” by the CIA twice.

“I think it’s interesting, what we’re doing is more to promote peace than anything,” Mortenson said.

For that reason, he admitted the book’s subtitle — One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations … One School at a Time (chosen by the publisher) is somewhat misrepresentative.

“I don’t really care about fighting terror,” Mortenson said. “The biggest issues in the world we need to address today are poverty, illiteracy, ignorance. Ignorance breeds hatred.”

Calculated by UNICEF, the estimated cost of eradicating global illiteracy is $6 billion to $8 billion annually for 15 years. In 2005, Mortenson said, the U.S. spent $94.2 billion in Iraq, and another $14 billion in Afghanistan, fighting the “War on Terror.”

While the political climate in the U.S. and across Asia can be disheartening, Mortenson said he continues to believe in the inherent good in mankind.

“I look into the eyes of my children, and I see the eyes of children in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said.

“When I see those little girls — their tiny bare feet, or in plastic Chinese boots, walking to school — those little footprints in the dust may be tiny, but I think of Neil Armstrong on the moon. She’ll become a role model, a giant leap for her community.”

Greg Mortenson speaks on Thurs., Nov. 2, at Eric Harvie Theatre at 7:30 p.m.

For tickets go to https://secure.banffcentre.ca/mc/2006/festival

To learn more visit www.ikat.org

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