“Changing Central Asia on Three Cups of Tea,” By Jena Doolas and Sayira Khokhar

Posted on March 7th, 2010 | Filed under Best Practices/Non-Profit, Faith and Politics, In Print: New Books, InterViews

With the first cup of tea you are an invited stranger. With the second cup, you are a friend. And with the third cup of tea, you are family. Such is the custom for welcoming guests in Central Asia and most symbolic for Greg Mortenson the co-author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea.

Mortenson began his journey on one road, trying to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain in Pakistan’s Karakoram. As far as that goal was concerned he failed, became disoriented and took a wrong turn, literally, and ended up in one of the remotest towns at the foothills of the Karakoram: Korphe.  This was the beginning of new meaning and focus for him and the opening of doors for many people he had never met yet. Mr. Greg, as many call him, recovered his health in Korphe and while doing so, learned much about this harsh environment, supportive village and the children living there.

During his respite he learned about the village’s school and how Korphe and the nearest village shared a teacher so that the students only had a teacher for half the days of the week. And on the other days?

After the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables.  Most scratched in the dirt with sticks they’d brought for that purpose. The more fortunate, like Jahan, had slate boards they wrote on with sticks dipped in a mixture of mud and water.... Can you imagine a fourth-grade class in America, alone, without a teacher, sitting there quietly and working on their lessons? I felt like my heart was being torn out…. After the last note of the anthem had faded, the children sat in a neat circle and began copying their multiplication tables.  There was fierceness in their desire to learn, despite how mightily everything was stacked against them...(pg. 32)

It was in Korphe with his hosts, while partaking in three cups of tea, that human connections steeped, and bonds strengthened, and when Mr. Greg made a promise. In September of 1993, he decided to build a school for this town, a place on the road where a wrong turn had been made.

On April 3rd, Greg Mortenson will be coming to the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago for a CAI Gala Dinner and fundraiser to present his new book, Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Stones into Schools continues his story into the roiling present, providing historical, political, cultural and religious context for CAI's work. Work that seeks, through education, particularly for girls and women, to be the solution for the fanaticism brought to these areas by ignorance: "If you fight terrorism, that is based in fear. But if you promote peace, that is based in hope. And the real enemy I think is ignorance. It's ignorance that breeds hatred," says Greg.  He adds that "...if a woman has an education she is much less likely to condone her son getting [sic] into violence or to terrorism." And it is with his mother's blessing that a young man goes on jihad. Without this blessing, hate, and the violence that follows, dissipate.

What Greg understood and acted upon intuitively from the day he got lost in the Karakoram is the custom of the three cups of tea--reaching and seeking out others and taking time to learn. In Stones into Schools, Greg collaborates with Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so that a much needed school in a remote area is finally built. Of their work, Admiral Mullen says "...Only through a share appreciation of the people's culture, needs and hopes for the future can we hope ourselves to supplant the extremist narrative. We cannot capture hearts and minds. We must engage them; we must listen to them, one heart and one mind at a time" (pg. 313). This is the worthy diamond amidst the dangerous, gritty, and risky work of bringing light into the remotest and most forgotten parts and peoples of these countries.