Greg Mortenson: conquering mountains and hearts- Last Part

Greg Mortenson: Conquering mountains and hearts- Last Part

Greg, having made up his mind, returned to the United States to collect donations for his dream school.

“Everything about their life was a struggle,” Greg recalls, “They reminded me of the way Christa … had a way of just persevering, no matter what life threw at her.”

He sold most of his belongings including his car and his climbing gear and wrote more than 500 hand written letters to different celebrities asking for donations. None of which yielded any results. Greg received his first major donation from his mother’s
school in Rivers fall Wisconsin when the school children collected 65,000 pennies in less than a week.

 In 1995 Greg returned to Pakistan and went ahead with his school-building project in the Korphe, starting with a 282-feet suspension Bridge.

Today after 16 years of fighting the odds with his iron clad determination, Greg has been able to build 145 schools in the region providing education to around 58,000 children including 44,000 girls. In all this time he went through several life threatening
ordeals when he was kidnapped by Taliban in 1996 for ransom and later released. He stood firm against many religious banishments (Fatwa) thrashed upon him by local mullahs.

As Greg fondly recalls the day when he was asked to come inside one of the sacred mosques and was handed over a black box by eight high ranking Muslim clerics. Greg remembers the day as he thought it was probably his last day on earth. Instead to his utter
surprise, there was a letter in ornate Persian which held Greg’s work as the highest among the principles of Islam. The letter also maintained the view that there is nothing in Quran which goes against education for either sex. 

 Among other long list of awards, Greg was also bestowed with Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan), the highest civil award of Pakistan. Greg is the co-founder of the Central Asian Institute (CAI), which is running several social uplift projects in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and also heads a no-profit organization “Pennies for peace”.

He spends most time of the year in Pakistan and tours the United States promoting his New York Bestseller “Three cups of Tea” which he wrote over his experiences in Pakistan. Greg’s wife Dr. Tara Bishop and two daughters Amira and Khyber live in Bozeman,
Montana and frequently visit Pakistan.

"I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decides 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."

Greg Mortenson remains as one of the very few enlightened ones who are fighting the war on Terror on the right front. He may not stand shoulder to shoulder among the many celebrated war veterans, but the people of Korphe will remember him for generations
to come.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=9890

Posted by Naveed A Bari on Jan 20 2012. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry