Three Cups of Tea to Warm Your Days

With only a few days before the Ujian Nasional, I feel very grateful that a book saved me from the impending monotony and exhaustion. This lifesaver, which I got as a birthday gift, is titled Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David O Relin.

As you might guess from the three girls in the cover, it deals with something in somewhere in the muslim world. To be more exact, it tells the true-life story of mountain climber-cum-activist Greg Mortenson who, after his failure to summit K2, stumbled upon a small village in the Karakoram Ranges, Pakistan. The isolated village of Balti people welcomed the unlucky American with open arms, helping him recover despite their own poverty. In return, Mortenson promised the village chief that he will come back and build them a school for the children.

The first half of the book tells of Mortenson's struggle to fulfill his promise and to survive his own hardships in America. He slept in his old car, worked hours and hours, and wrote half a thousand letters to everyone he thought might help the purpose including celebrities (have I mentioned Oprah?) When his goodwill finally stood on stable funding, he finished the promised school.

Here, we drink three cups of tea to do business: the
first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you
join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - even
die. Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief

Realizing that there are even more people to help in the mountains of needs, Mortenson and his benefactors founded Central Asia Institute to provide similar education assistance to the area. He had to face thousands of obstacles, including a fatwa by a narrow-minded mullah against educating girls.

The story of an American who literally scales the mountains to help impoverished, uneducated Pakistani children is an inspiring story. An "infidel" risked his life educating the isolated people of the Karakoram, who had been deprived of the most basic facilities by their own government. The touching story is the strong point of the book. This humanitarianism shows that philanthropy transcends nationality, race, and even religion. The book is also an eye opener that somewhere, Islam is still being hijacked for totally un-Islamic purposes, shown by the mullah. Islam had been exploited to oppress the people. This is what Mortenson have fought to prevent.

The book itself is charmingly written. The story flowed from the glaciers of the Karakoram, to the many unmarked villages dotting them, and to the US of A, back and forth. At some points in the book, you will feel astonished that the earth-and-sky contrasting parts of the book had been the parts of the life of one man, and that you were taken on the journey half a world away. The book cherished Mortenson's relentless efforts of providing education to the population, showing every detail of his hard work.

I strongly recommend this book, and I hope that anyone will enjoy reading it as much as I did. This story of unrelenting goodwill and good work will do every heart a lot of good.

PS: I'll be writing an American Idol postmortem perhaps tomorrow. This week is Mariah Carey's week, and the performances are incredible.