Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian

On Wednesday, we went to Auburn to hear Greg Mortenson speak.

The best word to describe Mortenson is humanitarian. In the early 1990's, he was climbing K-2, the second highest mountain in the world, which is on the border of Pakistan and China. The climb was to honor his sister who had died when she was 24. He was saddened that he didn't quite make the summit, but on the treacherous route down, he became lost and was eventually saved by the people of a small village in Pakistan. He fell in love with these people, and when he left, he promised to return and build a school for them.

He did, and since then Greg Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute have built dozens and dozens of schools, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. I can't begin to impart very many of the lessons that Greg Mortenson presented in his approximately hour and a half lecture. There were so many. He told his audience that the most important voices in Pakistan and Afghanistan are the elders of the many little villages. It is these people who approach Mortenson and ask him to help them build a school. Mortenson has become a facilitator, although I don't much like that word. He helps the villagers get the supplies they need for a school, helps them along in construction, but always makes sure that the project is theirs, their special creation.

And Mortenson makes sure that these schools educate girls. Educating young women, he believes, is one of the surest ways to better all lives in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Girls, he explains, go home from school and teach their mothers. And read newspapers to their families. And become aware of the realities of modern life. He cited a very interesting example. Twenty years ago about 10%, I believe, of the female population of Bangladesh was literate. At the time, the average number of births per adult female was 8. Twenty years later, 60% of Bangladesh women are literate. Now the average number of births per adult female is 2.8. This figure is so important because Mortenson believes that a huge problem facing Asia is the exploding population.

With education, both poverty and fear can be defeated. Nearly everyone in Afghanistan and Pakistan want to defeat these two destroyers of life. The citizens of those countries have made Greg Mortenson their own. Not one of the schools he has helped construct has been destroyed by the Taliban, because the Taliban knows that these are schools of the people. Perhaps, my favorite story of the night was when Dr. Greg as he is called, although he isn't a doctor, told about this particularly rough group of elders from a village in Afghanistan, who wanted to see one of his schools before they committed to building their own. He arranged for a visit to a school that had a playground. When these tough, carbine-carrying men saw the swings and slide, they were entranced. Mortenson has a picture of two of the scariest Afghanis you'd ever want to meet swinging with huge grins on their faces, bullet-filled bandoleros across their chests. Men who had never gotten to play in their lives, played for an hour and a half, and when they were finally done, declared that they must have a school, as long as it had a playground.

Enough said. Read Mortenson's THREE CUPS OF TEA and STONES INTO SCHOOLS. Be amazed by a man who knows how peace is made and how life should be led. You will be moved and fascinated. And know this as well: one man can make a difference. Ten years ago, 800,ooo Afghani boys were going to school. Now, 8.2 million Afghani children are attending. Much of the thanks goes to Greg Mortenson, humanitarian.