An hour with Greg Mortenson

is that as the humanitarian he set out to climb a mountain that ended up on a remarkable journey world he won i'm here today and he's here three cups of tea which begins with a failed attempt to climb out to a promise to build a school in a remote afghan the village then another school and another mortenson has now helped kill seventy eight schools in remote villages in asia teaching more than twenty eight thousand students here's a recap the university in topeka fbi first i'd like to read you on behalf of all the kids have around the world pass along all like home which means peace be with you and although its chief once told me if you want to do business in our rural areas sunni three cups of tea the first cut

you're stranger second cup against and third cup you become family but the process takes several years and four family were prepared to do anything even die now the subtitle is a little more interesting the subtitle of manhattan the penguin viking they tell me you're a subtitle we one man's mission to fight terrorism one school time and although i'm a military veteran i was very opposed to that subtitle because i told them you know my grandparents my parents our educators and the reason i do this is to promote peace well they disagreed of mesa finally buy some of the kurds are went to new york for the first time and i summoned a jury is like a tribal council members susan kennedy says the ceo of eighteen publishing houses and had a marketing and head of publicity and i was like whoa people they're nitride eloquently state my case a y like the subtitle be one man mission to promote peace was good time off i'm a guard dime and i said great

this is your first book so you need to learn a couple things about the publishing industry only one out of a non fiction books makes a profit and two thirds of all the cells are pre chosen by us the publisher so it like to from or your book you need to be fighting terrorism so he can pitch the media so the book and do well will finally i can see that but having worked many years in pakistan and afghanistan i made a deal and you never subtle do about driving a hard bargain around the world so i said if the hardcover doesn't do well i want a paperback subtitled changed so the hardcover came out missal about twenty thousand copies are hoping for another zero behind that and in december two thousand six i got a call on pakistan from paul simon the new editors and we decide to change the subtitle of your book one man's vision to promote peace once called a time so it came out january thirtieth last year has been a new york times bestseller ever since then and i think a

home or actually even without one big city didn't do a book review on the book where only on national pr starting two months ago the national tv until last november the real reason this book i think did so well is because it's women's groups book clubs churches universities students everybody talking and people who are yearning for peace at the pentagon this summer brought about five thousand copies its mandatory reading now for all officers are going to counter intelligence training and the pentagon if next monday tuesday mlb at the pentagon an enemy to admiral mike mullen who is our co chairman joint chiefs of staff he read three cups of tea and also well about four months ago i got an email from general petraeus has thousand new us central commander eighty seven email he said he had read three cups of tea and then he

said i'd like to tell you the six bullet points that i had gleaned from this book is a military officer got a bullet points and the first three were number one we need to build relationships number two we need to listen a number three we need to have humility or respect and i thought oh no this is very visionary for our commander to be talking about those things and if you go into the field you'll see that many of those things have been applied in last year's election some really great things happening on the field but it's because there is this inner people understand one three cups of tea really is about well i i'm basically a midwesterner minnesota lutheran and i was three months old my parents were in minnesota they decide to go teach a girls' school in africa and africa so afterwards africa or a grip for fifteen years and i grew up in tanzania there was a great place i got to go to school children from two dozen different

countries my father ended up starring a hospital called the kilimanjaro christian medical center it took about ten years for him to get the hospital started and when finally the hospital opened in seventy one he got up and gave a speech he set in ten years all the department heads of this hospital will come from your country tanzania this is your hospital well many of the americans and the europeans afterwards so my father how could you dare say such a thing and said these people up for such an unrealistic expectations because of that would never be possible we came back to the states and my father died from cancer in his mid forties oh we got than a report from the hospital ten years later and all the department heads are from tanzania and even today thirty seven years later all the department heads are still from tanzania in africa and earn a proverb as a child that you can remember one thing i remember this beautiful african proverb it

says if your educator boy you educate an individual but if we educate a girl which you take a community or filing came time to come back to the states has very excited i wanna play football and experience for the two eyes and cracker jacks and fireworks and all those good things are happier in the us but my first day in st paul minnesota in high school i got beat up and the reason i did this because i said i'm african and there was some confusion about that it's okay to laugh about this that would put a garbage can over my head and started be now me and you know was the first time in my life to learn what the word racism and was a first time i learned about prejudice there was in africa it was here in the us i am forty years after high school and you're seventy five and it's on the very unpopular time to join us army was because the very poor i want to serve my country but also under the gi bill so i could get an education was it in the army where men

young men and women from all across the us and for the first time or realize this is a great country not because of our commonality that because of our great diversity i had three sisters and my younger sister her name is kristen and crystals are a special girl was because she suffered from severe epilepsy and she never once complained dickerson our night before school she would pack her bags in your clothes lined up your lunch ready and your homework i'm kind of five minute that abbas can a guy sorry college students might be five minute that abbas can a guy or gal something way ways i'm kristen had severe epilepsy and she never complainants inspired all of us in order for twenty third birthday kristen seen the baseball movie called field of dreams that takes place in a corn field in iowa and users barber other movies over twenty third birthday says can go for many apples down to buy or sell or my mother went to a depressed on july twenty fourth ninety two recent either asleep for a massive

seizure were all devastated by it so the time i was climbing a lot i thought i was also a nurse and i was studying of epilepsy or a physiology it summer pick a beak that mountain climb and take risks as amber necklace that uganda africa and stick it on top of the mountain so i want to get to as the carrot or a mountain range as the greatest consolidation of high peaks in the world there are twenty three peaks of all i'm sorry sixty four peaks above twenty three thousand feet and under my area so was the name the freeway the coherence seventy next time you go down i seventy caucus all five miles a return to going straight up and that's a high these peaks are ms gloria the west or it's on the left hand side is china oh yeah the pakistanis would have a chinese use of allegiance any gun toting chinese border

guards we went to illegally into china back into right on up to the top and pakistan by late seventy eight days later was time to go home and i didn't quite make it to the time i to foreigners good summer i was weak exhausted mac at a most of all i was disappointed because i felt as if i failed and not honor my sister kirsten and coming down the mound i would put my hand in my pocket i kept feeling that amber necklace and i felt as if i failed those of you read three cups of tea can anybody here remember what the first chapters call it's already don't like to talk about much of the us failure are a country of different defer the ground it's fan when i submitted the manuscript to your basic great in the us you never start a book or the word failure it's bound to fail but you know we all make mistakes our lives are well failing and assertive couple

my failures when i turned sixteen i went to take my driver's license tests and we're quite poor story of the little honda civic is after that oil prices the seventies and that led to parallel park the car in at the accelerators of the breaks might hold a family car and then in college i used to play football and in seventy eight we won the nai division two national championships but we did lose one game that year in that game i had to take a twenty year for quality of the game were behind sixteen or seventeen and anybody here you can get a prayer for god's sake right to the polls over there anyways i lined up all snapped i miss if youre going was again some of us burn cookies in the oven some of us fail in our relationships and i don't even say same or some of us fail and are investments that some of us fail and many endeavors and when that moment happens think of this very beautiful person proverb when his dark you could see the stars

so here we are leaving cape do at or fifteen miles a scary about ninety pounds or struggling along and i stumbled into this little village called core fe when i got to the village village chief audio leave that music is kind of a stout squat man had a growth as a silver beer first you memories of salam ali grimace means peace be with you and he looked at me very circus have to use only being from the midwest the stresses my conveyor chisel is what the heck no i was weather beaten my pants or at worst saw him taken about an ad for days and he said that welcomed her village but you do need to take a bath suited me down to the river washed up and i want a sauce pretty having our rulers in afghanistan and pakistan for about fifteen years i learned many things one out of three children born dies before they to one female

literacy rate offers like two percent or five percent many of the men leave the villages to try good jobs in the city as dishwashers a road construction crews have to go down to look for her it was a behind its the women that women outnumber their workload has doubled so i spent some time recovering their incredible hospitality and also saw how know them empower how impoverished they were one day went behind him going to marry for children sitting in the dirt five girls seventy nine boys and most of the kids were writing mistakes in the sand when a young girl named georgia came up to me just said no it's kind of cold air was on and to help us build a school i made a promise of that is that a promise to build a school for you not having grown up in africa i seen a lot of poverty and so that really did strike me that it was their fierce desire to have a school or really struck me as i stood there looking at those kids and owner says no teachers there and

i said where's your teacher this other teacher muster the same as in the next village when john because they can afford is daily one dollar salary that they were deliberately during adolescence so i figured out that i have to raise about four thousand dollars i came back to the states have no clue how to fundraise and i've gotten a litany of both criticism and praise you know for how i raise money but basically what it does i went oh i worry the new migrants in here and get on the ground for i think five to this fierce liberalism and all of your analysis before is alive or embrace it and i'm trying to build a school packs so many tourists will thousand dollars or can you help me out meet her donation but some ideas so the librarian she and i looked at the name if i've heard at celebrities and movie stars and sports heroes and over ten weeks i i did not as it appears a hand typed five hundred eighth letters dear michael jordan

career services to low and took ten weeks and i thought that's not too bad because what happened nothing happened then it at christmastime once checked it come back from tom brokaw for a hundred dollars and recently thomas moved to montana where he lived as a ranch thirty invite us for dinner one night and tom's been a big help for the book hero to work on the front end he talks about three cups of tea they also stand avoiding me lately so i asked zhao of them you're avoiding the late lee thompson well greg lot of people come up to me and ask about his three cups of teaching i'm really embarrassed his only real hundred dollar check and you know i didn't have the guts to say you know you can still write another check and my daughter that insult to injury my daughter an ice is in the seventh grade now we're doing homework recently math homework and she was kind of distracted and

then she looked up at me and said daddy i figured out that in ninety three you spend a hundred and twenty thousand postings that he only raised two hundred dollars from tom brokaw well then i saw my car or so my climbing gear so my books i really love books and libraries to by law books a very painful to sell my most precious books and by springtime only raised two thousand former dollars my mother is a principal westside school in wisconsin river falls if i become a doctor kids i spent two days there were six hundred kits like your way to leave a fourth grader named jeffrey came up to me said i'm a piggy bank a moment i mean how do you raise money for that school wyden think anything of it and six weeks later they had re sixty two thousand korean or forty pennies when you think about it it wasn't celebrities wasn't adults with children in their innocence of purity reaching out to charlie hough around the world and so from that program out today we have a place for peace program for

lack of better words it's kind of going bananas lately last year was in three hundred and seventy schools this year it's in three thousand foreign schools are next to rethink about twelve thousand schools and because it's been growing so fast rather than trying to control it we've made a curriculum and let it cost so encouraged kids every or find something different to support and also my mamie teach kids that they can make a difference in the two examples there's a twelve year old guy in danville california his name is garrett and character pennies for peace for three years alas gerty read about the kids in johannesburg who live in ghettos they live in non barbara boxer's or brother garrett is a kid's had nowhere to play so garrett started a nonprofit lesser called find a field the orgy and western erased fifty eight thousand dollars a nice set up at nice big soccer fields in the ghettos in johannesburg there is a guy named jeffrey is from tampa florida jeffries twelve years all

jeffrey dunn pacer piece the last year he has his best friend of trouble learning and reading kids used to make fun of his best friend sir geoffrey started a nonprofit called the red wagon foundation and last year is about two hundred thousand dollars to help kids in the tampa area have trouble learning how to read and write and he also walks i think two hundred and eighty miles from tampa to birmingham to raise money for her kids have trouble learning how to read and write also in jackson county in oregon some of the library's by analysts last year eighteen public libraries shut down in jackson county because a lost revenue to live as a re opened up at the camps after that happened in the county all the kids on the street they start then he's refused to help raise money for the libraries they really got the community and it galvanized to say we're not getting care law every step down in our community and what it is as kids to make a difference and anybody can make a difference in effect of the concept of the episode one

penny they can make a difference here really catches on in san diego i think about a month ago and a guy there professor i don't know why he spends his time still use the heat ominous enough pennies in the us that we could eradicate global literacy two times over on the subject of illiteracy i think that's the biggest problem in the world today and the problem that we need to tackle make whenever toppled parties today in the world there are a hundred and ten million children or deprived of literacy and education into slavery poverty gender discrimination racial discrimination because the wars in many government or governments if we wanted to as the whole world a simple recipe we can eradicate clover letter say their cost six billion dollars per year for fifteen years nineteen billion dollars sounds like a lot of money but about one or two dollars per month per child and i hope that you

know that that could be one of the top or parodies so lauer did reverse go back to ninety four and got the money for the school and back to pakistan at the school supplies up to the village i got to the village had to leave the village chief first greeted me it's a long while ago and then he said jews alike now because i had brought the school supplies but he didn't think it was coming back he said you know we don't think you're going back so if you really want to build a school route build a bridge first so i had thought of that said come back to the states raised ten thousand more dollars and in ten weeks and ninety five i believe two hundred eighty four foot span bridge or the broader river well in nineteen ninety five september thirteen i was thirty years old and i was working a lot i was also graduate school and i was about sort of this enormous is going i was at a fundraising dinner seven sisko it's getting kind of

late i walked to the back as a beautiful woman in the back to get on a dress and she was wearing black combat boots and i started talking to her and six days later we got married so now living happily ever after in montana with their two kids and in pakistan it's very easy to explain this to say was both are our fathers are dead so we say you know they're they're both up in heaven and i decided to get together and we have a fixed marriage and sex marriage is not a love marriage suffix marriage is bound to work out in the long run my wife tara at the time she was in graduate school she's a clinical psychologist see we don't have a lot of money in our stride raise money i would type way into the night i see i learned on his computer brother type these letters like a two or three in the morning one might say that i woke up so what are you doing reading nice warm reading fundraising letters she looked over me just a great these letters are the same and so the us has a heavy ever heard of cut and paste anyways

so an hour later i got all the letters written another door where we're finally going back to pakistan we work for about three years to get the school than a lot of physical obstacles because a three years later when gotten very far and actually the problem wasn't them the promise me and i was doing something that we call micro manage that i'm i plumb line receipts america's i was determined that the school built one had early he came up to me he said we're grateful for how but you need to do one thing you need to have faith need to sit down and be quiet and led us to the work and then he took my prom my wrist is margaret's you lock them up came back and said they're reaping will be fine but she worries that ensures means following of course i was horrified this would happen six weeks later the school the belt and i wasn't for a lesson i had to like go let the community apart so you

set up a school now we provide skilled labor and materials but they are the village just break free land free word free resources socialize and free manner labor like age twenty eight hundred square foot school that provide two thousand eight hundred three days of manual labor and what that does is it gets people really invested in their own school oh this is on a microscope where you can also place on a macro scale one of my main say suggestions are criticisms of the reconstruction in afghanistan initially was that is primarily centralized and deeper rejoiced some of you are from here this but you look back in history after overture there's something called the marshall plan and a marshall plan i think was a brilliant plan the architect who designed it were genius the main way the marshall plan a set up as those provincial eyes and the centralized than of gas stomach completely flipped out around only recently last couple years and we start switching around

things are really going to make a difference well ninety six i decided to dedicate my life to setting up schools after around the world and what happened is i had a fart or a desperate effort to fart or as michigan speeding fart or basically is a year china a fire can be many things a comedian women can go to washburn university are women you can go to topeka bizarre to go shopping or you can watch television and my case it was banning meat from the country because as helping girls go to school so i went to this gentleman syed abbas risley is a very it's a very powerful man also very visionary man i so whatever you decide i respect your decision so several months later he summoned me into the inner sanctum of a human bar moscow's garden as very imposing i thought i might get to know the country and study from a red velvet box we opened it and he read a letter a letter for an ornate force your

perfect script you wrote dear compassionate or whatever future cases alec are on education is encourage for all children furthermore this man is doing is in the highest principles at a saucer your blessings and our support so tamara give us i'm convinced we can drop bombs or we can build roads or electricity unless the girls are educated society won't change several studies show it can educate a girl least a fifth grade level three important things happen one reducing for mortality number to reduce a population explosion a number three member of the courthouse on life itself i think number two it's a very important thing to think about if you look at the population of the world where it's headed into three four five generations it's a little bit frightening the number one way to curb populations without doing anything else after

anything as female literacy and education and it's a time for going away really know getting a population somewhere under control also for my own perspective it's non academic but i see girls learning how to read it right when they come home the first thing their mother asked them to do is write a letter to their families because often when women are married her maternal ties were severed by be able to write letters to women or part and be able to communicate with the families also you'll see people coming home from the marketplace and feel have meat or vegetables wrapped in newspaper and you see the mother very carefully and fully newspaper and ask your daughter to read the news to her was the first time they're able to get to disseminate information and news and learn about the outside world and what's going on around them and i can tie that's a really incredible experience for a woman to realize that she's part of a bigger global community if you talk to our markets and he won

the nobel prize in economics are ninety eight year in a book called the romance reviews from some harvard history from cambridge he says that one dollar invest in education reach her an eighteen dollars after one generation single most important lesson you can make in society is investing girls' education of course they're getting up or stupid it's a no parking the bank for the box girls' education also infant mortality drops that maternal mortality rate as i've mentioned the population no gimmicks to examples of population bangladesh or talk about combat medicine it seventy the female or syria was under twenty percent and they decide to get every single girl and boy educate the country today the female or straight has tripled in a bangladesh the population is just now starting to reach an apex is about two point eight live births are female now pakistan

the female literacy rate is about thirty five or thirty five percent gorman says fifty eight percent but it's not a look a lot of things as i can be that high and whatever it is but in pakistan the population is going to double in the next twenty seven years from a hundred seventy five pound to three hundred and fifty million people and population many things happen is that there is problems over land resources water oil inflation although since happiness as too many people not enough land and resources and female education is a proven time prevent way that can reduce populations and do a lot of other things so that that's a really good news doesn't really bad news that you are near the bad news first the good news so the bad news isn't i'm ready to try this in the last year says well you're the houses two thousand seven the taliban and other groups a bomber destroyed a shutdown four hundred am at schools in afghanistan

and about fifty in pakistan most of those schools are girls' schools so why wouldn't the man wanna bomb a girl's school not a boy's school because i think their greatest fear stop a bullet less than even more than that they fear that the girl grows it's an education grows up and becomes a mother without education or in the community now the good news i'm a view here though the fact and in afghanistan today there are six point four million children in school this is a unicef and unesco figure two million or female in two thousand was owing eight hundred thousand kids in school and if you hear where that is so in the last year i've talked to maybe three or fifty thousand people have asked a question i've had about forty hands come out to me that's a single most inspiring incredible news to come out of country nobody in the us is aware of the media government think

tanks universities i was speaking at camp pendleton to two thousand us marines the spring we're about to go to afghanistan and afterwards hundreds of them came up to me it's a thank you for sharing with us that one good piece of news that alone gives us open her daughter think that's good news i hope that we could imagine quick enough to more on the front of the newspapers are talking about some bomb or something they'd say no the number of kids in schools gone up eight times and public education and in kansas is going to get a five percent boost in funding this year at home anyways so when you leave here you can say well there are some really good things happening and it's related to education simon just give you one example that's what young woman name is a season and

diseases from cerberus umbrellas a very remote area the tribal areas aziza is the first young women out of four thousand people to get an education when she first was uneasy at when she first went to school for boys doubles letter n stones because she was a girl that it was cool though it's a got up in the high school the teachers refused a teacher because his female what this work does is a graduate and in nineteen ninety eight she wanted to become a maternal healthcare worker learn how to deliver babies do pre and post natal care in her valley there is no doctor no medicine mayo clinic before is is there working five twenty women died and covered every single year in the valley so ninety eight aziza went to training costs eight hundred dollars she came back in two thousand she gets paid just over one dollar per day not one single woman has died in

childbirth last eight years and that cerberus a rally i guess dozens of emails also from people serving in the military in afghanistan they reiterate what herb it also center on education nothing will change here says colonel christopher callender he until we came back two months ago for mckesson reserve sixteen months as a commander of the ford operating base in are a printer province in eastern afghanistan as well most difficult dangerous post serve in the country and like for example an august eleventh us soldiers were killed in cargo which is in his jurisdiction and then the next month for your son's killed in camden nj so this is an email a semi last october and we've been in touch credit and his what his email said he identifies himself and it said i am our primate goes counterinsurgency is to serve the good people of afghanistan

particular children building schools saw my top parties i am convinced the long term solution to terrorism is education the conflict here will not be one of the bombs with books and ideas that excite the imagination towards peace tolerance and prosperity a thirst for education is palpable and it is education that will make a difference where the next generation grows up to be educated patriots were illiterate fighters stakes could not be higher and these are afghan militia commanders are called common cancer in the west sometimes are known as warlords they will say the same thing that syed abbas the stomach your mom or colonel collender says without education nothing will change in our country and if you're in afghanistan on independence day which is in august they have a parade it's like for the july parade here in topeka

and there's little that think something unusual about the parade is first the widows come some are widows from merkel's they've lost husbands serving in the military militia and then there were constant father's rank your fighting and then the wounded veterans come some of them are in wheelchairs and loesser legs some of them marc rich isn't a hobbling along and finally the snappy and saudis come with a weapons so could imagine here in topeka visit for the july parade and first the widows came loesser has been serving in iraq or afghanistan and then you're friends came and then the wounded veterans came in wheelchairs on crutches hobbling along and five in f sixteen floor just think of that for one moment the reason they do that it's because they want to honor their sacrifice and they also understand what war is about war is not just an ugly thing

but there's also better in war we need to honor the sacrifice of people who are in war and i think about all the time i also meet some widows who've lost their husbands in iraq or afghanistan and they ask me you know please help us to get a school set up in afghanistan as they wanna make the sacrifice worthwhile so i'm asking you on behalf of you know the islamic leaders chronicle and though the afghan militia leaders that education is work can really make a difference and lead us towards peace there is a earthquake in pakistan to thousand five is very tragic there were two point eight million people displaced seventy four thousand people killed twenty thousand for eighteen thousand were children in school and it's very tragic there were sixteen hundred schools destroyed by today only one quarter of those schools have been re it built was very tragic first there was an incredible

director for all of pakistan international community helped out the us said into doesn't see forty seven chinook helicopters the conduct of the greatest helicopter left in history mankind for that the people were grateful within a year would happen is a dropped about seventy percent in the wake of that many jihadi or us labeled terrorists or as agents of the refugee camps people going to these camps because they want more about hatred they go there because they're suffering and starving we need medicine we need shelter and are deprived of education you know we often hear christian leaders or was some leaders or jewish leaders are hindu leaders imply or infer that god is on our side you know and i think god is on the side of the widows or friends and refugees until there's no starving widows until there's no children deprived of education until there's

no orphans in distress i don't think anybody has the right to say that god is on her side and there's a waterwork to be done there's also a hope if we can the premiums we're also running about four dozen other schools these are in refugee camps and we make do with what we have this is a my lunch on afghanistan there are twelve knight raiders are going to school to steal truck contain a story an armored personnel carrier if you take a look inside it's either learning english and there are eighty second graders they're going to school and still truck and tanner this is used to bring over us military supplies we sell which the government into a classroom of course were the girls are going to school outside they have their school kids as a one man and one teacher one black or if you look in the front you could see they have their shoes off as not because they're

trying to be comparable that's because they have so much an honor and respect they can go to school they take their shoes off and it goes school and you can own a pretty much any school and rowe afghanistan or parks and i could see their kids take their shoes off because they have so much honor and respect on the teacher what's in this a good morning in for a song like home and start their lessons some of these young women might actually work two hours go to schools can like working for southwest kansas know spout like them so in a very windy and blustery and sometime this know if you read three cups of what you look at the back of three cups of tea so something a little bit crazy like i'm an indiana jones fighting remarkable humanitarian campaign in a televised backyard everyone says you know i'm just like any of you father i'm a husband i'm a veteran i make a lot of

mistakes were mostly i'm very passionate about education and i i don't do this to be running around the world separate from my family because that's the most painful part of my job i get to see my kids learn how to tie their shoes are not a walk right a bicycle other was there for one incredible event and gender two thousand sex i just come back from pakistan from earthquake areas as hard to come back here and my son and i use five or reading bedtime stories nelson he start to read those of your parents and librarians and teachers you know how precious our moment is when you see a child first learned how to read and write and i celebrated that moment i'm also very blessed to have an incredible wife and family end and having now been roundly us it's also incredible to see the americans were good people are compassionate people we have tremendous courage and compassion but the thing that we can do is we

can't live in fear we have to live and how we have to really lead the world with our compassion and our courage and how we really care about people and i see that happening and being able to go to some of places like they're really excited to think about what's going to happen in the future i don't talk a lot about politics but i measure of you one little thing both obama mccain and also hillary clinton earlier they asked me for an indoor smoking over their campaign and i told them after elections i'll be happy to talk to you and i did that based on you know i asked my wife what am i supposed to do you know i don't want to get involved in she said you know great role and heat right now so stay really far away from them i am a i am a little bit concern because i've talked to special forces on the ground in afghanistan two weeks ago as a camp atterbury in indiana talk a hundred ten us special forces

about when afghanistan have to talk to afghan military leaders to their national leaders just three people now say we do not need more us troops in afghanistan or we need the news to become a rearrangement and most of all we need training resources and supplies for our own troops and police but most of all polling is education and i'm a little concerned because i talk to said thomas week and the us is getting ready to rapidly we deploy about two to three more brigades in afghanistan and you know obama's really interesting that that if he went over and talked to people over there in the other military leaders special force are they would say oh really right now what we need is training and education so i'm hoping that the new leadership but before we start talking about you know he said everything with military efforts it we can really listen and talk to people over there is like oh jillian and

tsunami quiet listen to us and let us help you look at how we can bring peace in our country we open up a girl's school in june the village last year in a rather conservative area pakistan it took us eight years to convince a mole other foot one girl in school we opened up the school last year there were seventy four girls in school this year there are three hundred and fifty girls going to school lunch in the village i'm often asked why do you actually do this no what's your agenda you know i really don't have an agenda what i'm trying to do is listen to the people's party elite army and i ask women what do you want i am here to serve you i like to tell people what do you want and you think women would tell me want a good husband i want a cover story why prosperity what most women say or two things number one we don't wanna baby supply number two we

want our children to go to school and so any way you look at the weight answer to their dilemma as its about education really was the peaks that first riders there are the people who bring us back and back again this is an edge of his wife's aquino they have been married about fifty five years but she and forcing passed away from party of failure in early two thousand one i we got her fate gradually was very sad as we walked her grave she was buried in a little box facing the west toward the sunset they're very rare moment sentiment you certainly with our i am nothing then he said something that i've never forget so very soon you'll be standing here and i may be in the ground and he kind of chuckled and i don't think was very funny because i lost my father and my sister and all of us here have lost somebody who's dear to us and you never get over that you said when that moment happens i want you to do one thing when

i'm in the ground and you're looking at me i want you to listen to the wind i think much of it but when i go back to portray him to october two thousand one thousand pakistan three months before and after nine eleven i actually personally was working every two months' period i went up to his grave larry was there in a box facing the west towards sunset and just as a predicted as very sad that i'd never had a set aside to listen to the way and so i listen to the wind and i heard the voices of the children in the school and i realized his legacy vision had come true for the education for his children and also brought back some very precious moments in the evening how joey you love to read the only had two books at a holy koran and a persian poetry book yet these rules that double glasses you know the book really close up to his eyes

many read when i was to read i often notice he was sad and sometimes it ever turn as i saw last thirty one day or a sad when you read so greg actually i don't know how to read as much i'd memorize these books it's my life's greatest tragedy that i never learned how to read and write as well as graceful my children my grandchildren can learn to read it right and then his words he said these words can make stories that make wise the fools and by fools he was referring to illiteracy and ignorance and i realized that after decade standing there looking it was a box in the ground training i had come full circle because i haven't found a field of dreams the cornfield in iowa i haven't found the field of dreams on top of a big bad man called k to bite found a field of dreams a little village they skulk or fate in pakistan

in buzz about two thousand for a woman named patrick collins says from seattle says a very wonderful elderly woman showed lung cancer and she asked me to come and see or one last time so enter a little apartment in seattle and see that asked me to bring these three dr seuss books to her then she asked me to bring a pan so i got pepsi and she said i'm a write something in these books and can you take this to my for the children in pakistan so then she took her piano very feeble hands of each of these books sure the following my dear little girls study hard go to school learn to read and write and be forever free the patsy and but anyways ten days later she passed away about these books to pakistan but think of those words now study hard learned to read and write and be forever free

there's been so much interest in three cups of tea is now twenty seven countries the pentagon's thousand copies gonna bear it's also as it weighs other countries and there's such there's even junior high schools generated so in general we have a young adult book coming out and i have a pilot on about a thousand letters and emails with criticisms of complaints of suggestions about three cups of tea so i've tried to listen to everybody's know opinions and so in this in the senate all hoping other young we have a glossary of those two timelines it's also the time i was really important to go running around circles of three cups of tea and a lot of voters and we also have a twenty page at edition by my daughter mira who has written about what she experiences and then the kids of pakistan afghanistan and they asked a bunch of questions on the questions is how does it feel when your daddy leaves and goes away for several months halfway around the world what was it like

for you sosa well you wake up in the morning that we take my dad to the airport we cry a lot but not a time that we go to school and then as school goes along we're happier because we know we get home from school bad a breather because he missed his flight and then the next day are really sad because we know he's going to make his flight answer a part of a lot of things she also i also get a fair amount of healthy letters saying that i'm a bad data for us because i'm off halfway around the world in on abandoning my family whenever my daughter's taken a lot of guys say she doesn't like that and so she spent two page and they're talking about how she has form some support network with hundreds of thousand kids whose parents are serving in the military are gone for year year and half people are working in aid worker all kinds of work and all around the world you find parents are separate from the

children and you know suffers most of the children they're the ones who make the greater sacrifice a mirror if you replay young adult book you'll find them to find out what it's like to you know for a child whose whose parents are gone over the year i'm also working on a second book and this book i got a lot of control over so i can you know like write about failure something and i've also i have a huge pile of like a thousand letters of them how to make this book a better book and one so if you have any ideas terry can tell me also what you'd like to hear about another part well again i think i'd like to specially thank all the students here at washburn it's been such an incredible day i look forward to coming back again and also learning about the transformative experience i think every universally country should know a widespread universe is doing with the experience here and that is it's really cause you're one of

the very rare universities are doing that i have found like northeastern university in boston graduate have to do one year free service us air force academy two years ago requires of all graduates have to have three or competency in a foreign language is all these incredible things happening and you have one here at washburn so i am and i hope the community and some of the benefactors here they could support the transformative experience because i know that that's really i mean it's really that's really what's going to bring great changes to thank you very much you've been listening to the great author of the bestselling book three cups of tea speaking at washburn university november twentieth two thousand i'm kate mcintyre kansas public radio's university of kansas off this

evening the stick it is the skies at me

now hey no way at st louis says the new law

day me is it really

is it mit's simon keep your prisons us

get in the holiday spirit with the ghost of christmas past present and future it's charles dickens christmas carol vintage radio bbc production starring sir ralph richardson christmas carol h clark sunday night and kansas public radio the issue has been the pasture

week it's been it's beans