Greg Mortenson

An old African proverb says: “Educate a boy and you educate an individual. Educate a girl and you educate a community.”

This philosophy underlines the work of the Central Asian Institute (CAI), a non-profit organization set up by Montanan Greg Mortenson, and whose founding and early work in building schools in Pakistan was described in the bestseller “Three Cups of Tea.”

Greg got lost in the mountains of the Himalayas after an unsuccessful attempt to climb K2 — the second highest peak in the world — about a decade ago. He was rescued by villagers from Korphe, the last human settlement before the glacier leading to K2. Greg promised to return to build the villagers a school. “Three Cups of Tea” tells the story of how he kept that promise, and it sold over 3 million copies, as the story of how an American’s offer of education and books changed the lives of villagers caught the imagination of ordinary Americans who had endured years of outrage and sadness at seeing such people described as “collateral damage” on their television news.

Greg himself humbly describes “Three Cups of Tea” as the story of an ordinary man who inadvertently bumbled into an extraordinary place. The title comes from the custom in the neighborhood that during the first cup of tea you drink with someone, you are strangers. The second cup of tea makes you a friend. It is the third cup of tea that makes you family.

With the runaway success of his first book, Greg’s CAI gained access to media coverage, but more importantly funds started to flow in from many, many ordinary people who had been moved by reading the story of how children in villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan were studying in tents, makeshift schoolrooms or outdoors and how their communities were eager to work together to provide a school.

In the time since the story of “Three Cups of Tea” ended, the CAI has grown to be the founder of 131 schools that provide education to nearly 58,000 students. It also provides sponsorship for further education and runs teacher-training programs and women’s vocational centers.

The story of the endeavor since the last page of “Three Cups of Tea” is told in Greg Mortenson’s new book, “Stones into Schools.” The work expanded in the North-West Frontier Province and Kashmir in Pakistan in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and spread throughout northern Afghanistan in the wake of the fall of the Taliban.

This is an area where American presence is often linked with an attempt to bring democracy by strength and might. Mortenson’s philosophy, which has captured the hearts and minds of individuals, families, young children, women’s book clubs, church groups and schools in the US, is different. “The battle will be won with books, notebooks and pencils, the tools of socioeconomic well-being,” he says. “To deprive Afghan children of education is to bankrupt the future of the country and doom any prospects of Afghanistan becoming someday a more prosperous and productive state.”

The secret of this remarkable man’s approach is his willingness to come alongside the community and hear what they themselves are saying. Unlike foreign heads of state, government ministers or army commanders, who are perceived as coming with their solutions to a tricky problem, Mortenson prefers to reach out and establish a relationship with the leaders and elders to see what would encourage the girls in their village to get an education.

The story of “Stones into Schools” is full of examples of listening carefully, of building relationships with village leaders based on trust and respect and involving people in shaping their own future. It is a formula that has brought the added reward of enabling villagers to have a sense of pride in their achievements and long-term ownership of the project. In the outpouring of anger and rioting following Newsweek’s erroneous article that a US soldier in Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Quran down the toilet, all foreign projects and offices were smashed and looted. The only one in the neighborhood left untouched was a CAI school. The reason why? The local elders blocked the entrance to the school and proclaimed that “this is not a foreign school belonging to a foreign aid organization; it is our school, which belongs to us and our community.”

This is a methodology that is familiar to NGOs and government-sponsored projects in Anatolia related to girls’ schooling. Coming along with fines and prison sentences for fathers who don’t send their daughters to school because of the simple financial economics of living in a subsistence farming community will never solve the problem. Only projects such as Snowdrop and Send Me to School, Father, which provide an income to families who send their daughter to school, tackle the real problems. As with Mortenson’s projects, huge budgets are not needed. Just TL 40 per month can make all the difference to a Turkish girl’s life.

A striking example, again related to the way Turks understand this principle better than Americans, came out of the Pakistani earthquake. Mortenson tells how the high-tech synthetic tents sent by US outdoor sports manufacturers were not really suitable for Pakistani families because they were highly flammable. Cooking with gas-canisters made the family home a death-trap. But the success story for re-housing was the rebuilding kits donated by the Turkish government — the secret of the success being that they were designed after significant consultation with people on the ground. Bought locally in Pakistan, they consisted of tools and materials so people could build their own shelters. Mortenson remarks, when he asked Pakistanis what helped most, “The reply was consistent: getting the roads open, and the Turkish re-housing kits.”

If you are looking for a book that tells in simple formula style how an American superhero came to Afghanistan and Pakistan and sorted out all the problems that the poor indigenous population had, then this is not for you! The heroes of this book are not all-American, they are not even the amazing motley crew of locals who work for the CAI, nor are they the dignified village elders, they are the women whose lives are changed by the education they receive and who then go on to change their communities.

Shakila Khan graduated from the first class of the school in Korphe and became the first locally educated female physician. In Aziza Hussain’s village as she grew up, more than 20 women died every year in childbirth. Since she returned to her village after receiving vocational training in 2000 not a single one has died.

Just as “Three Cups of Tea” is a title with a striking message behind it, “Stones into Schools” is equally moving. It resonates with the biblical prophecy of peace in the Book of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

But it has a more intimate meaning for the villagers of the tribal areas in northern Afghanistan who had endured decades of war — first against the Russians and then the Taliban and finally the international push to drive out the Taliban. Looking up at the hills, they said that every stone, every rock, every boulder on the hillside was a young man who had died in the struggle. Now these stones were being brought down to the village, cut and shaped and were forming the square stones from which the schools were being built. From their sacrifice was to come the future hope for the village.

Mortenson’s tale is one of a people determined to rebuild their lives, needing just a leg up from the international community. He says, “The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy has so far managed to offer them what neither we nor anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny.”

(c) Sundays Zaman 2010

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