Three Cups of Tea

I''m really excited that this year I've chosen to review a book that works for Joyful Jubilant Learning on multiple levels.

First, I'm always looking for true stories of how an individual or team can take declare a new possibility, especially an imaginable but seemingly impossible "possibility", and out of their passion and commitment making that seeming impossibility a reality.  Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations...One School at a Time By Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin is that kind of story.

In 1993, not quite 15 years ago, Greg Mortenson was working as a nurse in San Fransisco to finance his passion for mountain climbing.  On a failed expedition to the world's second highest mountain, K2, Mortenson deliriously takes a wrong turn on the path down and finds himself taken in and cared for by the villagers of Korphe.  During his recuperation, he asks to visit the village school, only to find the students out in the open, practicing lessons on their own while awaiting the return of the teacher they shared with another village.  Mortenson's heart opens, and he promises he will return to Korphe and build a school.

As of the date this story was published, along with what the book characterizes as "one of the most underqualified and overachieving staffs of any charitable organization on earth," Mortenson had built fifty-three schools in some of the most remote and politically unstable parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  The schools Mortenson's Central Asia Institute builds educate girls along with boys, and offer a secular education to compete with the madrassa, the schools sponsored by religious extremists in the region.  Talk about a way that education can change the world!

And the book works on another level, as we see Greg Mortenson himself challenged to learn and grow thanks to what the people of these villages have to teach him. The book takes its title from an incident in which Mortenson is supervising the construction of that first school in Korphe and apparently behaving like a bull in a china shop.  The  village headman asks Mortenson to accompany him on a walk.  He then strips the American of his tools, locks them in a cabinet, and sits him down to a cup of butter tea.  Haji Ali explains that Mortenson is driving everyone crazy.  He warns him that to succeed in Baltistan, Mortenson must learn to respect their ways.  "Doctor Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea.  We may be uneducated.  But we are not stupid.  We have lived and survived here for a long time."

I found this a wonderful lesson.  As newcomers to a place on the planet, or as a manager new to a team or company, the key to our success will be to respect and learn from others.  What we think we know may not be the knowledge that our goal requires.

Last but not least, I recommend this book to you because thanks to the writer David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea is non-fiction that reads with the pacing and drama of a great novel. I can pretty much promise that by the end of this book, you will find yourself understanding why Relin confesses to having lost his journalistic objectivity.  Like him, I found myself wanting to see Greg Mortenson succeed, and wondering what I can be doing to make my world a better place.

Beth Robinson

Comments

[Steve Sherlock]

Beth, thanks for sharing this. The message is a very worthy one. Change takes time. Sometimes, the change is better done more slowly than all at once. This is a great contradiction with today's hurry up, need to have it now world. The cups of tea build the relationship within which change is more accepted. A little stream of water will wear out hard rock. Not overnight of course, but slowly and surely.

[Dwayne Melancon]

Awesome, Beth. This is one of those books I probably would've passed over had it not been for your review. Thank you for sharing it.

[Karen Wallace]

Beth, this sounds like a very inspirational book, and one that I am sure I would never have found had you not shared it with us. Thank you - I have added it to my wishlist!

[David Zinger]

Beth,
I have not heard of this book but you have whetted my appetite. I am still not much of a tea drinker but I will stop and smell the coffee and sip it slowly before racing to do something.
David

[Rosa Say]

Beth, when you say, "I can pretty much promise that by the end of this book, you will find yourself understanding why Relin confesses to having lost his journalistic objectivity" the person inside me who loves not being objective and very happily so, cheers wildly. Three Cups of Tea must be a writer's delight.

In recent years the differences in how education is handled and regarded through-out the world has become very fascinating to me. We who think of ourselves as living in the *blessed civilized* regions of the world take so much for granted, and are so unappreciative. Hooray for Greg Mortenson, and others like him who seek to give as they can. It causes me to recall that bible passage... For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

[Beth Robinson]

What a lovely Sunday morning "conversation" for me to take in along with my (first) cup of coffee! Thank you all for your comments. The book was a gift from my brother, and I would not have found it myself had it not been for his aloha.

Thanks to the reviews in this wonderful forum, I now have not only a stack of books to read myself, but also a great list of gift suggestions for the year!