Three cups of Tea

By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
pages : 338
I encountered this book by accident. We were in a friend house in Michigan and I saw this book on my friend’s table. She told me, she was reading this book together with her daughter. I thought this book must be interesting, as my friend’s daughter was only 14 year-old. Honestly, I knew about this book long before I saw this book on my friend’s table but I was not interested in reading it. So when I went home to Erie, I browsed the internet for a synopsis of this book and bought this book from Amazon.
Three Cups of Tea is a personal story of Greg Mortenson. He was a climber. This story began after he climbed K2 in Pakistan and failed. However, his failure was a blessing in disguise as he met a nice family of Haji Ali. Little that he knew, Haji Ali would be in his life for a long time. Mortenson was in the village of Korphe and he learned that this village did not have a school, as the government of Pakistan did not provide a teacher. However these obstacles did not stop Haji Ali, the head village, to educate his people. After seeing the determination of Haji Ali and the children, Mortenson promised to come back and build a school for them.
This story also told us the life of Mortenson as a little boy living in Tanzania. There were many flash back-stories of him and his late sister, Christa.
I was touch by his effort to find money to build schools in Pakistan and about his bravery to go to far away land.
He tried to write to many famous people and asked for a little bit of their money and it was sad to know that big names like Oprah did not respond to his letter
Mortenson later on focused his effort to build schools for girls as not many girls in those county could have higher education. He also continued his work to build these schools in other parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This book made me thought of my existence as a female. I was lucky enough to live in a country that allowed girls to study and to be in a family that could pay me to go to university.
This book also made me thought of those people who took education for granted and demanded their teachers to give them good grades easily.
I was in Asia recently and saw the news about flood in Pakistan. My heart went to the people and the children who probably could not study anymore as the flood might damage the schools.
Back to the book. This book is easy to read and the more pages you are on, the more you want to know about the people and the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
To know more about the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Mortenson's effort to build schools, please visit Central Asia Institute.