Three Cups of Tea

I am dangerously close to joining a book club that I've been invited to a few times now.  I guess it's this month's selection that made me drop that large text about Lincoln & run to the library to check it out before anyone else got to it.  It's Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin.  So far, it's been amazing story & I'm not even a third into it.  If I had to make a recommendation based on what little I've read, I'd say yes, go dash out & find a copy straight away.  

It's about an extraordinary fellow who finds himself lost in Pakistan, having gotten separated from his mountaineering expedition team & his Balti guide, Mouzafer.  After a real rough time that I'm sure I wouldn't have survived, he wanders into what he thinks is his destination, Askole, but has actually wandered in the village of Korphe.  The people of Korphe take him in and care for him, restoring his health.  They give until it hurts & he is appreciative.  He wanders the town & he when he sees that the children have no school, he makes it his mission to build them one.  From there, it's a great story on how he raises funds & his haggling for building supplies.  That is as far as I am in the book, but if the first few chapters are this engaging...

So far, this book has given me a lot to mull over -- I love books that let me take away from it.  I get to learn bits & pieces of Muslim culture without the politics or the crazy rhetoric.  It's refreshing and very human.  Too, it's interesting to know that even on glaciers tucked away in remote Pakistan, the mountain trail is littered with cigarette butts & human noises, which is startling to me because I imagine places like that to be clean & pure.  The human mark!  

The idea of the school is to make it hard for militant madrassas to recruit new students.  Education can prevent terrorism!  Too, his aim is to educate girls.  I almost cry thinking about my fortune; I often forget how brutal the world is -- in most of cases, it's especially hardest for women.  The unfair harshness unleashed on the women in say Afghanistan makes the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act seem silly, even if I find that measure a true mark of human progress.  I guess it is fair to suggest that some women do not mind this treatment, but then there are women who do mind & simply want to work or go to school or not wear a burqa amongst many things we take for granted.  They cannot!  And the few who do try to make a different life often suffer -- honor killings, getting acid thrown in the face.  This is not my reality, but it is someone's.

The book is recommended.