Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Finding your life’s purpose and changing the lives of nearly 24,000 children and their parents in the process is sometimes less about running after defined dreams and sometimes more about listening to the wind. Three Cups of Tea is the story of Greg Mortenson, an extreme mountain climber, who in failing to conquer the second highest mountain in the world, stumbled across his life’s work, changing the future of 24,000 impoverished children and their families in the process.

The book was written by Mortenson and writer David Oliver Relin and published by Penguin in 2006. It was a New York Times best seller and 2007 winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize for Nonfiction. It’s easy to understand the book’s popularity given the region which Mortenson’s work finds him in. The mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan are now at the heart of the war on terror and central to winning that war, says Mortenson, is educating the children, especially the girls.

Mortenson’s story is vividly detailed in this well written book which provides and understanding of village life high in the mountains of the Karakoram Mountain range located in Pakistan and bordered by China to the east and India to the south. The strongly Christian Mortenson is taken care of by a village of strangers after losing his way on an expedition in the mountains. He is cared for with kindness by the residents of the Korphe village and eventually comes to see their leader Haji Ali as his mentor. Through Ali’s eyes, Mortenson begins to realize how inaccessible education is in this part of the world. He also begins to understand that the inhabitants of the area would give anything to have a school and makes a fateful promise to help the village build a school, and in so doing sets his future in motion.

As a precursor to understanding the war on terror and its root causes, this book is invaluable. Throughout the book we see first hand how brutal poverty and lack of access to the essentials of life make them easy targets for Islamic extremists who provide food, clothing and an extremist education that fuels the war on terror. By educating the girls, not just boys, Mortenson believes that the society will in turn become more educated.

Throughout the book we watch as Mortenson is kidnapped, swindled, caught in firefights and even has local Muslim leaders issue religious pronouncements, Fatwas, against him and his work. The journey is an inspiring story that displays how one person’s promise and determination can change the fate of a nation and indeed,the world.

The writing style is fluid and quick. There are some gaps in the writing, for instance the time he initially spends in Korphe is abbreviated and we miss understanding some of the passion that fuels his initial promise. But at 336 pages, the adventure and the rich characters more than make up for it.

Another interesting subtext for this book is religious tolerance and respect for other cultures. As a Christian, Mortenson is primarily educating Muslim children. Rather than providing a Christian based indoctrination, Mortenson strove to provide the children with a balanced education that could save them from the extremism that was popping up everywhere in the country. As an infidel, the Muslim word for a non-Muslim, his mission was that much harder and that much more improbable. When asked if he was a Muslim while in the region, his response was that he was a Christian, but that he respected Islam. That respect ultimately allowed him to go in places and meet people the U.S. military could only hope to know.

Dr. Greg, as he came to be known, was more popular than the president in the region as he served the needs of the poor in exemplary fashion. For Christians called to serve and for those interested in understanding exactly why there is a war on terror and for those daring to be inspired, I highly recommend Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

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No two ways about it, staring is impolite. So, with great pleasure, I bestowed a wide-eyed Mike Singletary stare on four Australian teenagers eating a meal on the other side of a glass McDonald’s door in a restroom waiting area. For good measure, I pointed at them and feigned a whisper to my 11-year-old son blatantly daring the impolite teenagers to respond to my childish actions. Yes, I’m 40 and I still haven’t learned to always take the high road.

As a 40-year-old black American, I’ve grown accustomed to stares. My parents made sacrifices early in my life and moved us to the regular dinner times and bedtime stories that haunted predominately white suburbs with schools that would fill my childhood and adolescence with rich experiences and naked ugliness. Somewhere in between those two extremes, lurked the stares of unfamiliar friends and familiar enemies. I came to know the unwitting power of seemingly benign stares.

I was surprised to come across a book on the subject, Staring: How We Look, by Rosemarie Garland Thomson. She clinically dissects the peculiar nature of staring and fine tunes the murky details of the age old, unavoidable attraction it wields over our eyes:

We stare when ordinary seeing fails, when we want to know more. So staring is an interrogative gesture that asks what’s going on and demands the story. The eyes hang on, working to recognize what seems illegible, order what seems unruly, know what seems strange. Staring begins as an impulse that curiosity can carry forward into engagement.

Curiosity can be at the heart of staring, but my experiences also knew that staring was a silent segregator, dividing those who belong from those who do not. The teenager’s stares reminded me of those experiences. Their furtive glances and stiffled giggles fired up emotions long ignored, relegated to obsolescence. Anger and rage were normally inappropriate responses to the primary motivator for staring, curiosity.

The problem is, the stare automatically betrays the starers understanding of what is normal, casting the object of the stare, the staree as abnormal in some shape fashion or form.

“Staring offers an occasion to rethink the status quo. Who we are can shift into focus by staring at who we think we are not,” Thomson writes.  This creates the power struggle inherent in the stare that we feel but don’t understand. The staree is defined against a fictional backdrop created by the starer. In the case of two people attracted to each other, the backdrop is mutually beneficial for both the starer and the staree. “Staring encounters nonetheless draft starees into a story of the starer’s making, whatever that story might be, whether they like it or not,” concludes Thomson.

I can remember one of my earliest memories as a child was a staring incident in which I, the starer concocted a story for my staring subject. I couldn’t have been older than five and I was on a trip with my mother to the supermarket. The American era of free love was drawing to an end in the seventies and hippies were everywhere. Following close behind my mother, I rounded the corner in what I believed to be the dairy section. Riveted by what I saw my hand rose with a pointed finger singling out the focus of my youthful attention. I spoke loudly, to my mother’s eventual mortification.

“Momma,” I shouted in semi-joy, amazement, and curiosity. “Is that Jesus?”
My mother’s lowered head and aggressive tugging gave me the sneaking suspicion my answer was, “oh my gosh no, you are such an embarrassing child, please stop staring and didn’t I teach you not to point at people?”
In that moment, I created a world for the anonymous grocery store patron to fit into. Even children have the power to create a world into which adults conform.

So, I grew up practiced in the silent art of staring as most of us do. The suburbs prepared me well to become invisible to the stares that I would so often get. When we notice we are the subject of staring, we are forced to respond in some way. Even the choice to ignore is an initiated action. I recently spoke with a friend, the child of a military officer stationed overseas. While stationed in Japan, he vividly remembers an incident in which children walked up to him and began rubbing his brown skin, which they clearly had never seen before. They stared and touched in stunning amazement.

“I pulled my arm back,” he said, “but my father stopped me and told me to hold my hand out.” As his father explained to him, even if he didn’t understand, he was representing a whole new realm of understanding for those children enamored by his skin and his appearance. His father taught him to smile at the stares; his very presence was educational. He still remembers that lesson to this day.

I can understand this perspective, but the teenagers who had been eying my family, whispering amongst themselves as they gawked at our existence was proving to be unsettling. I had traveled across the world to enjoy the Australian culture and, as a veteran of the staring game, I was seldom unsettled. But the nature of the stares surpassed even my appalling experience on a South Korean bus in 1987. After coming to a complete stop, the bus driver turned to me and stared me up and down the entire time the light was red. His uncomfortable and obtrusive gaze never wandered from my 18-year-old frame. Only the anxious honking of horns from the cars behind him, who clearly had no idea of the wonder he had found, jarred him to unfix his uncomfortable stare and drive the damn bus.

The stare wields the power to render a person’s being, accomplishments, shortcomings and heroics obsolete. Inherent in the stare is the ability to reduce a person to a shell of their real self, substituting perceived stereotypes, notions of value, and worthlessness. In this ocular transaction, there is the potential for tension. My pointing display was evidence of my desire to ratchet up the tension; return the favor to the starer. It hadn’t worked, they continued to take unwanted glances, smirking and joking with each turn back to their table of peers.

In that moment, I was thankful I had talked with my children before they ever arrived in Australia. We talked about standing up for ourselves and never allowing anyone’s words, fingers or eyes make us feel uncomfortable. I communicated to them how important it was to understand people stare because they seldom see black Americans here and as my friend’s father taught him, smiling and educating the curious about who we are allows everyone to win. We talked about ignoring the stares and never internalizing them.

I was satisfied when my daughter came home laughing because a little Australian child around the age of five ran to her mother, pointing at my children, “Mum, look at their faces!!!” My daughter got it, she knew she was complete whole and beautiful and the child was simply amazed by her. Her laughter warmed, she could protect herself from the pressure of the stares. But, there is a point, where curiosity becomes blatant rudeness. I was now there. Question was, what was I going to do about it.

We were in the town of Gimpy, Queensland eating at a McDonald’s after being on the road for six hours. My grump factor was up as I was tired and hungry. The gawking teenagers had tested my patience and it was time to put an end to it, they clearly hadn’t gotten my impolite warning.

As my family walked out of the restroom waiting area toward the cashier and past the teenagers, they looked down at their food and a wave of patience came over me. I stared at their table, no one stared back. Thankful for my second wind of patience, I was happy to put the moment behind me, but as I passed their table preparing to get into the long line to order, I saw at least six other faces from all ages staring blankly at myself and my family. Would it always be like this? My second wind of anger filled me.

Unable to control myself, a smile came across my face as I stepped back to the table of giggling teenagers. Pausing momentarily, as I towered over their table my mouth opened, I didn’t know what was about to slide past my tongue. They had stopped giggling, and were now looking at the black man leaning into their table, their space of private jokes and shared conversation.

“I’m just curious, did you all want to ask me something,” I courteously questioned, distributing an even stare to each of the starees seated at the table? They all quickly said no, hoping to diffuse the awkward situation that was now unfolding. I paused again.

“Are you sure,” I asked again, staring ever more deeply into their eyes. They all again said no.
“Well, let me know if you do,” I offered as I left the table. They didn’t seem as curious as I thought they might, but no matter. I was no longer angry, no longer grumpy, only hungry.

In a recent Huffington Post article (here), comedian and political dynamo Bill Maher’s oozing sarcasm and biting wit took aim at President Obama’s defense of the firing of all teachers in a struggling Rhode Island school. We’ve  grown accustomed to Maher’s rants on religion and Linda Blair-esque attacks on anyone remotely contemplating the existence of a higher power.

Maher clearly has the answers when it comes to religion, but his brain, like a scratched record, must have skipped a couple of grooves in his casual lambasting of Obama for defending the firings.  He sorely missed the point and again is out to push the cynical agenda which so rampantly drains dreams, poisons hope and viciously exorcises his deeply seated religious demons.

The irony in his rant is that he missed some critical pieces of the underlying story. Factually, Central Falls High School was one of the worst performing schools in the state. The school board recommended that additional measures be taken to rectify the unacceptable academic situation. These additional measures included extra hours, additional tutoring, teacher training and additional planning time. The teacher’s union refused the measures without additional pay at which point the board threatened firing the teachers. They saw the train coming a mile away.

Not sure about you, but when the entire school under performs, seems like there is a problem with the institution. Maher would like to label all of the inhabitants of the district as terrible parents and accuse them of looking for a “boogeyman” instead of putting on their poor parenting dunce caps. But, the fact remains, Maher’s ability to critically assess the results of a properly functioning school seems to be a bit off.

Maher, who revels in his bachelorhood alludes in his article to  no connection whatsoever to the plight of parents across the country who have become nighttime teachers to supplement the poor education routinely delivered in the American public school system. Historically, the US has a tremendous credibility problem when it comes to delivering quality education in impoverished neighborhoods. The struggle for quality education in middle class neighborhoods is becoming increasingly difficult as well. The inability of our educational leaders to reward excellence in the class room and discourage mediocrity sentences legions of children to a substandard life as education is one of the primary determinants in the quality of life.

His argument, although sarcastically topped and bitingly written, lacks the heart and the conviction of someone truly engaged in the argument. It appears the topic is just another blog post to dash off between trips to the Playboy mansion. But any parent who has waited outside a lunch room to get a word in edgewise with a teacher who doesn’t return calls feels a little different. Any parent who has pulled their hair out trying to get a copy of their child’s lesson plan so they can spend extra time with their child knows the deal. They know the dilemma. The educational system is broken and “bogeymen” don’t exist.

What really gets me is that in the land of political correctness which Maher assails so fluently, the courtesy of a dislike or unDigg button is painfully absent from his post’s technical landscape!!!

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lemony Snicket should be purchased and perused by audiences of all ages: that is to say, despite the gruesome awful and terrible events befalling the hapless children in this story, it was a completely charming, dry heavingly funny, oddly sad and amazingly disturbing tale.

I cheated on reading this book in that we acquired it on audio tape to calm the family as we made a six hour trek with an eight and nine year old in tow. To my chagrin, not only did the children remain quiet, but the adults were riveted to the tale as well. A year later with only adults traveling in the car, it was still a hit.

The power of this tale is generated by the strong writing and unique literary devices employed by the author Lemony Snicket (a.k.a Daniel Handler) and Brett Helquist. The fictional tale recounts the lives of the Baudelaire children: Violet, Klaus and Sunny. The children are orphaned after an unfortunate fire claims the lives of their wealthy parents and their home. After staying with the manager of the family estate temporarily, the children are shipped off to live with a distant relative. Just when their luck seems to be looking up, it comes crashing down around them. The relative the children are sent to live with is a less than blissful individual. Blissful here meant to insinuate that he, being Count Olaf, was a repulsive, repugnant, dreadful man who was despicable in every sense if ever the word had applied to a human.

Throughout, the writing for The Bad Beginning is witty, precise and comical and oddly dark. The writing is so tremendous that adults with no children around will find themselves captured by the language, the story and the situations the children find themselves in. I believe the writing is so good that it overcomes the fact that nothing ever really seems to go right for the children and at its core, the story really is tragic and dark.

As previously stated, the orphaned children are sent to live with Count Olaf who treats the children terribly. In addition to plotting for their fortune, Count Olaf and his friends are not very fond of children and go to great lengths to make life uncomfortable and miserable for the children. At every turn as things seem to get brighter for the children, misfortune seems to magically appear to place yet another road block to happiness.

Throughout, the children rely on themselves to avoid catastrophe. Klaus at the tender age of 12, proves extremely bright and is able to keep the kids one step ahead of the man made traps placed before the children. Violet, who is 14, is the ranging thinker and tinkerer whose inventions and analytical mind serve to both escape and ensnare the children. Sunny, the baby, is simply an intuitive baby unable to do anything but incite laughter: loved her.

I’ve heard some rubbish masquerading as criticism bantered about labeling the tale formulaic and repetitive, however, for my first brush with the series I simply say bravo: here bravo means tremendous, wonderful and ppppllllgggghhhhhhh to all the naysayers.

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There is a loving rage engaging comprehension, shining pathways to humanity’s last stand in a land lost to time, reclaimed by ferocity.

Here, genetically irrelevant instincts are startled to usefulness. They ineffectually  fight specters slaying feminine spirits before the approach of motherhood. Allowing supernatural terror to be handled by babes masquerading as would-be mothers, their love is ravaged before it can save, before it can heal, before it can live. Their life and death is now sentenced to  sorrow filled nights and grieved dreams.

Predators are stalking dressed as unrighteous souls, leaking their sickness onto the landscape of our collective conversation painting gasps and tears on unwilling faces. These liars in our midst are monsters feigning humanity, defiling the sanctity of our morals as polluted as they be.

Shaniya cries and we lie. We lie, we lie. We lie to ourselves and we lie to others. We embolden mothers romanced in a love affair with the profane to sell our future and pawn our honor. We allow sanity, legality, apathy, safety and the proper chain of command to comfort little girls with running noses and bruised thighs. Tearful eyes, screaming for mommy living through pain not meant for unwilling women beyond the door of womanhood.

And we who had errands to run, appointments to make, jobs to fulfill and classes to attend, we who knew nothing of these matters, knew nothing of vigilance, knew nothing of suffering we whispered in a traumatized  child’s ear, “our care and concern is not with you.”

Long fingers point out killers and hint at allies staring in mirrors. Our silence applauds evil as it ravishes lives and claims future wombs too young to comprehend the potential of their destiny.  Our mouths confess sideline soliloquies speaking of children who battle lustful killers and incomprehensible villains unwilling to save their lives.

We surrender our apathy. We surrender our lives to the service of loving touches pure with concern. We reject the death of silence and the bludgeoning of apathy. We want our girls to live and our boys to joy. We pledge anew our lives for theirs, removing ALL villains who allow their brutalization.

A couple of weeks back, the subject was dodged but I knew the topic was far from buried.  Sex. An interesting albeit over saturated topic in the adult world , is an intriguing, embarrassing, funny,  engrossing and disgusting conversation for an inquisitive 10 and a snickering soon-to-be 9 year old.

I know, I know be honest, deal with it first go round. I’ve heard it and read it, but truth be told, my imagination just got the best of me.  Like a 50’s black and white reel with grainy oddly moving images, I  imagined remorseful adults locked up in the pokey, confessing to cellmates in possession of mom tattoos that the origins of their devious ways began when their dad screwed up “the talk.” I pictured them crying as they lamented of their downward spiral, led astray by their very own father.

Sounds absurd, but through the fuzzy channel of an unfocused brain, the words I chose somehow had the power to usher them from the innocent Eden devoid of sexual implications to a world suddenly saturated with it.

I didn’t possess the perfect beginnings for “the talk”,  so careless parenting stepped in courtesy of a local events mag entitled Creative Loafing. A city paper whose budget appeared to be on an extreme diet judging by the dwindling number of pages produced week by week. But I digress.

Creative Loafing, (bad daddy!!)

To understate a fact would be to say that Creative Loafing is NOT a kid friendly paper. Kid friendly in the sense that a child in possession of the magazine,  moderate reading skills and a desire to pass the time would feel they were doing a great job. Even if they hadn’t taken the trash out, they would realize they hadn’t gotten a tattoo, a piercing, called a singles chat line, hooked up on the local dateline, redeemed a Starship 1/2 off coupon, gotten botox or silicon breast implants.

Maybe once every couple of months I grab the magazine out of habit to see which bands are coming to town or review a particular cover story (seriously) or check out what’s going on in Atlanta. On occasion, I’ve needed to make a quick pit stop to clean the car after hearing the kids snicking at images of men holding hands on the inside pages or the scantily clad women urging them to dial 1-800-hot-pants. Aside from these minor incidents, nothing major ever came out of the not-so-often habit.

So, I thought nothing of picking the paper up on the way out of the library with my son about a week ago. We made it home and began cooking dinner without incident. While taking a break from the grill, I stopped by my office to see my son hunched over the newly collected paper, reading intently.

“What’cha reading, ” I inquired.

He lifted the paper up and pointed to the cover story without missing a beat. The story, “35  Years,” covered the details of a young man’s conviction for rape in Atlanta. I asked him, “is that something you think you should be reading?” He pauses, looks at me and comes to the sudden realization, “uhhhhh . . . No?”

Panicked and intrigued, I sit opposite him at the desk and ask him to tell me about what he’d read to that point. Eager to display his reading comprehension he proceeded to tell me. He spoke as a teacher would  impart wisdom to students and related his understanding that a man forcing himself on a women is called rape. He was satisfied that the penalty handed down, which was 35 years in jail, was a good sentence. His understanding was rudimentary and fundamental. That was oddly reassuring in that he didn’t really get the emotional human cost associated with the act. I realized that we were in a unique moment.

“How far did you get,” I asked, attempting to mask my concern. He pointed to the top of the second page. The time for the talk was at hand. Not a day later, not an hour later, not even five minutes later, but at that exact moment the time had come.

His response led to the instinctive question, “what is sex.” He smiled and giggled, coyly saying, “you know.” He moved his hands while giggling to indicate a motion for sex that only silly kids can make funny and not obscene. Drawn in by the giggles, his sister soon waltzed into the room and found a place on the floor, eager to add everything she knew and had heard from her friends to the conversation.

What followed over the next 45 minutes was an inquisitive, funny, serious and poignant conversation lead more by the children with me simply providing points of clarification I was amazed at some of the questions.

Can lesbians have children?

Can you die from having sex?

When I get married, do I have to take my clothes of to have children?

Did you and mommy have sex?

Can old people have babies?

The last was a great question that lead to my daughter running for her Bible to read to us the story of Sara and Abraham when they doubted God’s ability to give them a child.

All and all, the article albeit extremely scary, was a great starting point for our conversation. The hope was that they could feel comfortable asking their parents anything about sex. But I realized that the infamous talk is really not, “the talk.” It is she be called the introduction because it was simply the first step in a long road to teaching them how to effectively choose boyfriends and girlfriends and hopefully, soul mates that will strengthen them as children of God and lead them away from behaviors that would put them in harms way.

There were a couple of things that I learned and here they are:

1 – Get rid of any creative loafing and treat them like the plague if you have 8+ year old children. If you read them, read ‘em BEFORE you get home.

2- Similarly, find a mild mannered bock or article that deals with the topic, it’s much easier to start by finding out what they ALREADY know. This way you can be in control of how the conversation is initiated.

3-By getting your kids talking about their understanding of sex, it’s much easier to help guide them through the conversation and give them exactly what they need and not too much.

Good luck parents.