Three Cups of Tea

source: ikat.org

I finished reading Three Cups of Tea yesterday evening. It's a journalist-written biography about Greg Mortenson's Central Asia Institute, which builds schools all over Pakistan and Afghanistan for poor, rural communities. He focuses specifically on gaining female students under the premise that a community improves when women are educated. He and his associates fight terror in the only truly effective way - by building friendships and providing a means for better quality of life. They fight extremist madrassas with unbiased, equal opportunity schools run by locals and supported by local religious and political leaders.


The book opened my eyes to what's really going on in Pakistan and the middle east. For the first time, I'm ashamed to admit, I saw Pakistanis as people, as individuals, as communities that only want the best for their children and the best for themselves. It's one of those books that has fundamentally changed me. It's one of those experiences that helped me understand myself, and people living on the other side of the world from me, in a deeply reflective way.


I encourage everyone to read it.


"But working over there, I've learned a few things. I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death." - Greg Mortenson, p. 292


For more quotes from the book, please visit fractured-radiance.
For information on the Central Asia Institute, please click here.


I want to be the kind of person who does something about pain and sorrow and lack of opportunity, to take a leap, to rely on uncertainty, and to press on regardless of perceived barriers.