Three Cups of Tea

"If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not bombs." ~ Greg Mortenson

I have a tendency of buying books whenever I see that they are on sale. Because of this habit, throughout college I amassed a shelf of books that I never had time to read because I was too busy reading for class. Since I've now graduated, I've had time to start reading them. I vaguely knew what this book was about beforehand, so once I knew I was coming to Thailand, I kept it to read while I was here.

Hands down, it's one of the best stories I've ever read. And the fact that its a true story, not fiction, makes it that much more incredible. Not only is it amazingly inspiring, but it is well written, and was extremely powerful and moving at various points.

Three Cups of Tea is about a man who attempted to summit k2 and failed, winding up in a small, closed off village in the mountainous area of Pakistan. While there, he made a promise to the chief that he would one day build a school for the kids, who he saw taking classes outside in the cold, scratching their lessons with sticks into the snow. His promise to build that one school, and the struggles he endured to do so, sprung into the Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit which now is focused on building schools and other projects to help make the lives of other mountain tribes a little easier and better. The belief is that the terrorists recruit from that region because the children there have no other means of education, and by building schools, they are giving these kids a different option other than the madrassas that teach Jihadism and eventually recruit for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

What Greg Mortenson is doing and how he came about doing it is exactly what I needed to read about at this time in my life. I decided to come to Thailand because I wanted to make more of a direct and immediate difference than I could have while pursuing journalism. Reading his story simply reinforced my belief that this was something I needed to do at least for a point in my life, if not permanently.

And what he is doing in this period in history is phenomenal. I've thought about all the things in that area that I want to see, but have always worried about the dangers, especially to Americns, at this time. He shows that even that hatred is not universal and can be overcome.

But nothing I say about this book can do it justice, so all I can do is urge everyone to go read it. And if you're going to buy it, do some from a website that donates part of the proceeds to the CAI.