For when you step upon yourself, sacrificing your own needs
The sky shall come, present itself, beneath your humble feet.
(Rahman Baba, 1650 – 1715 A.D)
In 1993, Greg Mortenson stumbled his way across Korphe – a village high up in the Karakoram mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. The villagers took him in and nursed him back to health over a few weeks in which he came to learn more about his benefactors and their harsh lives. His encounters with the village children, watching them practice their school lessons by writing with a stick in the dirt motivated him to help in his own way. A trauma nurse by profession, Greg treated the impoverished villagers on occasion for their minor ailments – thus earning himself the name Doctor Greg. The village chief, Haji Ali acted as his main host and over the course of his stay they developed a friendship based on mutual respect and the desire to improve the lives of those around them.
Towards the end of his stay in Korphe, Haji Ali explained the principle behind the ‘three cups of tea’ that form the basis of relationships in their land:
“If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.”
Greg promised to return one day and build them a school, which planted the seed for one of the most incredible and effective campaigns of our time – Greg Mortenson’s mission to building schools for girls in remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His first book, “Three Cups of Tea” captures the nascent years of his work and the evolution of the Central Asia Institute (CAI) to an organisation that has built over 130 schools across the remote parts of Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Stones into Schools” picks up from where “Three Cups of Tea” left off, albeit in a more personal narrative this time round. Whereas the former referred to the protagonist as Mortenson, Greg employs a first-person narrative (“not my cup of tea,” he quips) to engage the reader with his experiences as he goes through the highs and lows of building schools – often several at a time. The construction of a school in the remote Wakhan corridor forms the central thread of the book that is inter-woven with events that happened between 2001 and 2009, most notably the earthquake of 2005 that devastated the northern areas. Such was the intensity that a generation of school-children was wiped out in under four minutes as they attended their classes at school when the earthquake struck.
The opening lines immerse the reader into what looks like a scene straight out of ‘Tilism hoshruba’ (“The tales of Ameer Hamza,” if you will) featuring 14 kyrgyz tribesmen galloping non-stop for six days across the Irshad Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan as they attempt to meet Greg before he heads back to Pakistan’s settled areas. They request him to build a school at Bozai Gumbaz, a remote mountain village cut off from the world during the winter months, presenting the severest logistical challenges (sub-zero temperatures, construction materials being hauled by yaks). Greg accepts the request, not knowing the scale of the challenge. Ten years and several disappointments later the school is built – not by foreigners but by the Kyrghyz tribesmen themselves who put everything else aside to complete the construction.
Mortenson spends a considerable amount of effort in emphasising the education of women and how it counters the negative effects of religious fundamentalism. Youth who wish to join the Taliban have to seek permission from their mothers “and educated women, as a rule, tend to withhold their blessing for such things,” he writes. The benefits don’t end there, a number of studies indicate that in a community where a majority of girls are educated through the fifth grade, infant mortality drops significantly after a single generation. Paradoxically, basic education for girls correlates perfectly with lower, more sustainable population growth. The construction of each school involves considerable due diligence as Greg and his team engage a variety of stake holders often with conflicting sets of interest to achieve their aims. As word of their schools spreads, they find themselves besieged by villagers requesting them to build schools, establish vocational training centres for women and charity. The impact is two-fold, firstly there is an investment made into the community in terms of the physical assets (building, books, salaries for the teachers) and secondly there is a sense of ownership inculcated into the community as they partake in the construction and running of the schools. On one occasion, in response to threats from the Taliban to demolish one of their schools, local village elders named a respected Mullah as the headmaster. The Taliban backed off.
Mortenson pays homage to his ‘dirty dozen’, CAI’s staff in Pakistan and Afghanistan without whom, he says, “I would still be nothing more than a dirtbag mountaineer subsisting on ramen noodles and living in the back of his car”. We are also introduced to Sarfraz Khan, who is the CAI’s point man in the areas straddling the Pak-Afghan border. A modern-day adventurer, he rides, drives and hitch-hikes across rugged and vast terrains supervising the construction of schools – often sleeping in the saddle during his journeys. Mortenson also highlights his interactions with the US military, acknowledging their support (“Three cups of tea” has been made required reading for intelligence training by the Pentagon) – though he makes it clear that CAI does not accept financial assistance from the Department of Defence.
“Stones into schools” chronicles Greg Mortenson’s and his CAI’s ongoing journey very lucidly, offering the reader a glimpse into the workings of a successful team that is changing the world – one school at a time. The style is candid and free-flowing, and the narration captures scenes that represent the physical and political landscapes of both Pakistan and Afghanistan effectively. If nothing else, the book serves to reinforce the idea that sheer determination and the will to serve (with a little luck) can go a long way in achieving incredible goals.
Ali Khattak is an engineer of sorts who likes to read books and climb munros, though not necessarily at the same time. Ali received his MS in Computer Engineering from the University of Toulouse and is currently working as a Reservoir Engineer at Shell.
