Three cups of tea - by Greg Mortenson

Three cups of tea - by Greg Mortenson

One man's mission to fight terrorism and build Nantions... One school at a time.

[I came to know about this book from my company's book list where many recommended this book. Folks gets motivated by something for something. Greg got obligated to assist his life saver (Haji Ali helped him during a trekking to K2(Karakoram) - world's deadlist peak) to build a school for Haji Ali's village which never had any school for the past 600 years. That was a begining of a great mission with the help of man with great vision, Haji Ali.

I am pasting some of the main clips, but I strongly recommend you to read this saga of humanity.].

Haji Ali spoke - "If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family and for our family, we are prepared to d oanything , even die. Dr. Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stuip. We have lived and survived here for a long time."

There was an incident where a local crook tried to block the construction of the school, saying it is a work of a infidel/kafir and demanded 12 of largest rams from the villagers which Haji Ali gave without any thinking. It is equal to handing over the half the wealth of village to the crook.

Greg's comment - "Sitting there beside him, I realized that everything, all the difficulties I'd gone thoguh from the time I'd promised to build the school, through the long struggle to complete it, was nothing compared to the sacrifies he was prepared to make for his people. Here was this illiterate man, who hardly ever left his little village in the Koraoram. yet he was the wisest man I 'ver met".

Another incident that happened long after the first school has been built.

While Greg is discussing the school agenda with local tribe leaders, a pretty self-assured young womna burst into the room, stepped through the circule of thirty tea-sipping leaders sitting cross-legged and approched the man who built . Talking a seat boldly in fromnt of Greg, Jahan interrrupted the rollicking meeting of her village elders.

"Dr. Greg" she said in Balti here voice unweavering. " you made our village a promise once and you fulfilled it when you built our school. But you made me another promise the day the school was completed. I tol dyou my dream was to become a doctor one day and you said you would help. Well, that day is here. You must keep yuor promise to me. I'm ready to begin my medical training".

Here comes this teenage girl, in the center of a conservative Islamic village, waltzing into a circle of men, breaking through about six layers of tradations at once. She had graduated from the school and was the first educated woman in a valley of three thousand people. She didn't defer to anyone, sat down right in front of Greg and handed him the product of the revolutionary skills she'd acquired - a proposal in English to better hereself, and improve the life of her e village.