Three Cups of Tea

This weekend was pretty laid back. I did some housework, some shopping, made a great chicken pot pie for Sunday dinner, started a puzzle, and finished a book.

I just finished Three Cups of Tea http://www.threecupsoftea.com/, what an amazing story!! If you haven't read it yet you need to, in fact every American should read it. It's about Greg Mortenson, a mountain climber who fails in his attempt on K2 (second highest mountain in the world). He comes close to dying on the Baltoro Glacier and wonders into a Balti village in northern Pakistan where the villagers take him in and save his life. To repay them he offers to build them a school for all their children. He has no money, but through sheer determination and unbelievable luck he manages to pull together the money he needs and heads back to Pakistan to build their school and discovers a few things, 1) as hard as getting the money had been, that would be the easiest part, 2) there's a lot he doesn’t know and much he will have to learn from the most unlikely teacher, and 3) he's found his life's work even though it takes him a couple of years to figure it out, and then someone has to point it out to him before he recognizes it.

Through his work the Central Asia Institute (CAI) https://www.ikat.org/ is born and he sets out to build hundreds of schools across northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. For a village to qualify for a CAI school they must donate the land, and labor to build it, and they must allow their daughters to attend as well as their sons. CAI also builds clinics, and women's centers. CAI schools, in many cases, are the only alternative to radical madresses where young boys are being indoctrinated into a terrorist culture. The CAI’s mission is to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. What the CAI is doing costs peanuts, but makes positive changes for generations.

Two of the girls from the very first class in that first Balti school have gone on to college, one to be a doctor and the other to be a teacher.

I have always said that you can’t change a culture in a few years, you need at least a generation. And, you can’t change I from the top down, you have to start on the block where people live and give them the power to make the changes. Greg Mortenson and the CAI have found a way to make this happen and it’s working in a big way.

I have made a donation to CAI and I'm sure I will make more. As a woman I feel the work they do is very important. As a mother I feel it's important. As the mother of two soldiers I feel my donation is also and investment in their safety.

If I had an independent means of supporting myself I’d jump at this. At this point in my life I have a low threshold for discomfort, so while I’d love to go see these places and the work being done, I’d still want clean sheets, a running toilet, and drive up service. I know, I’m such a wimp!!