Desi News Corp - Index

Desi News Corp - Desi News - July 2009 - Index

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bookWORM
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson
and David Oliver
Relin
Penguin Canada
$16.50
Here we drink three
cups of tea to do
“you
business; the first
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,” says
Haji Ali, chief of Korphe, a
village in the Karakoram
mountains.
Greg Mortenson, a mountaineer,
who stumbles into
Korphe on his way down from
a failed attempt at K2, describes
his first encounter with
paiyu cha, the butter tea that
forms the basis of the Balti diet.
After brewing green tea in a
blackened tin pot, he added salt,
baking soda, and goat’s milk, before
tenderly shaving a sliver of mar, the
aged rancid yak butter the Balti
prize above all other delicacies and
stirred it into the brew with a not
especially clean forefinger... It was
stinkier than the most frightening
cheese the French ever invented.
Fortunately for all concerned,
he overcame his gag reflex
and consumed not three, but
endless cups of tea with Haji Ali,
his wife Sakina, son Twaha,
and the rest of the village.
And forged ties that have
far-reaching consequences,
changing the lives of tens of
thousands of children.
Mortenson left Korphe promising
to return and build a
school for the children. Back
in America, he put his plan into
action by sending out letters
appealing for donations to
people on a list of the richest
Americans. From that naïve
attempt to gaining the support
of Jean Hoerni – who donated
money to build the first
school and then more money
to build the bridge that would
take the supplies to the village
to build the school – to raising
a million dollars through small
donations from a groundswell
of support for his project, it
takes Mortenson several years.
Three Cups of Tea is the story
of a rag-tag team of people he
pulls together, a diverse group
comprising Shiite Muslims, a
refugee, a couple of Sunnis and
an Ismaili, who in spite of their
inter-personal differences, believe
fiercely in the Angrezi who has
come to build schools in villages
that have been all but forgotten
by successive governments.
Mortenson survives, among
other things, two fatwas against
him, a kidnapping and being an
American in Pakistan when “a
village called New York” is
bombed.
It is the story of his wife,
Tara Bishop, described by a
fellow mountaineer’s wife as
every bit as heroic as her
husband.
How many women would have
the strength and vision to let the
father of their children work in such
a dangerous place for months at a
time? Tara not only allows it, she
supports it, because she believes so
strongly in Greg’s mission.
Three Cups of Tea is the incredible,
uplifting story of an
incredible man, a true hero of
our times, of all times.
“I don’t do what I’m doing to
fight terror,” Mortenson tells a
Congressional hearing. “I do it
because I care abut kids. Fighting
terror is maybe seventh or eighth on
my list of priorities. But working
over there, I’ve learned a few things.
I’ve lear ned that terror doesn’t
happen because some group of people
somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan
simply decide to hate us. It
happens because children aren’t being
offered a bright enough future that
they have a reason to choose life over
death.”
He believes positive change
can only be brought about by
educating girls.
“Once you educate the boys, they
tend to leave the villages and go search
for work in the cities...but the girls
stay home, become leaders in the
community, and pass on what they’ve
learned.”
Jahan, one of the first to graduate
from the Korphe school Mortenson
established with the blessings
of her grandfather, chief Haji
Ali, started out wanting to
become a health worker.
Now, she dreams bigger.
“I want to be such a woman that
I can start a hospital and be an
executive, and look over all the health
problems of all the women in the
Braldu...I want to be a...superlady.”
• Visit www.threecupsoftea.com for
info, events and ideas. If you
purchase books online, go through
this website and seven per cent of all
your book purchases will go towards
a girls’ education scholarship fund
in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
LIFE IS A
BEACH
In a House by the Sea
By Sandy Gingras
Watercolours, essays,
and what Gingras
describes as “a mishmash
of ideas and doodles, dribs
and drabs about being a woman,
a woman at a beach” make In a
House by the Sea one of the most
fun yet profound little books I
have read in a long time.
That I found the book on
the mantel above the fireplace
in a cottage by the sea that we
rented last summer just seemed
so right, so appropriate.
The beach that Gingras walks
on is more emotional than
geographic.
“The sky is huge. The water is
blue and glistening and utterly
calm…I am half girl, half woman,
just like I’ll always be. I realize
suddenly that summer is a verb.
Beach is a verb. I am a verb. I want
to beach, beach, beach, summer,
summer, summer.”
Gingras’ beach alphabet:
‘A’ is for Away. Away,
beachwoman, away with you to the
beach. You’ve had enough reality.
‘I’ is for I can’t remember how to
work the vacuum, and ‘M’ is for
your mother who can watch the kids.
Distilling the wisdom that
comes from countless endless
days by the sea, Gingras advises
making a list of all the things
you cherish. Instead of to-do
lists or shopping lists or lists of
things you want, count your
blessings. Literally.
She provides a list of a few
of her own favourite things:
Diving under a wave; the
moon lighting up the whole
beach; belly laughing; how your
husband looks in a bathing suit
and his reading glasses; a faded
beach towel; toe rings; always
keeping an eye out for washed
up treasure but being content
never to find any.
Gingras discards the Fear
Map, the I Can Think My Way
Out Of This Map and the
Straight Line Map because, as
Woman Without A Map, she is
deliriously,
happily,
“willynilly-ing”
along life.
A good
read for a
lazy summer
afternoon.
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July 2009 Desi News 35