Book: Stones for Schools by Greg Mortenson

Given that Greg Mortenson has been prominent in the public discourse recently after a 60 Minute segment which challenged much of what he has written, I finally finished this book (I had read most of it off and on the during the previous six months) with a certain puzzlement about Greg and this whole mega-story.

This continues the previous Three Cups of Tea in which Greg stumbled into Korphe in Pakistan and "the subsequent chain of events through which a lost mountaineer eventually came to discover his life's calling by fostering education and literacy in the impoverished Muslim villages of the western Himalayas."

So what is reality in this story? It is an amazing tale and I am inclined to give Greg the benefit of the doubt and reserve judgment at this point as Nicholas Kristof wrote that he would do. I just cannot think the Greg Mortenson has messed up so badly as to be incredible.

In the northeast of Afghanistan, there is a long, narrow piece of land that extends eastward to China for about 150 miles. It is called the Wakhan Corridor. To the north is Tajikistan and the Pamir Range, to the east China, and to the south the Hindu Kush and Pakistan. Bozai Gumbaz is a very remote village in the eastern Wakhan, about 25 miles from China, and it is there that Greg wishes to build a school for "The People at the End of the Road." It is a formidable task but then the whole project is. The vision and determination of one man, the power of one (and then thousands of supporters) and how schools got built in this politically troubled, geographically rugged area fill the pages of both of Greg's books.

So we will see, perhaps, what was/is reality and what may have been something else entirely. Of course I hope that the bones of this hugely inspiring story are solid.