bob martinson / NL Greg Mortenson speaks in the Campus Center Cafeteria on Jan. 24. Mortenson showed slides of his trek up K2 and his work building schools in Afghanistan.   For more information on Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute visit www.ikat.org.

UAA visitor builds Afghan schools

By Rosey Robards
Northern Light

It is not every day you meet a real-life hero.

Greg Mortenson is a hero, especially to the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has spent the last decade of his life building schools in those countries.

On Jan. 24, Mortenson presented a slide show and lecture in the Campus Center Cafeteria at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

He talked about a journey that began in 1993. Shortly after his sister died of severe epilepsy, he set out to the Karakoram Mountains to climb the treacherous K2. His original goal was to get to the summit of the world’s second tallest mountain but he soon realized the mountain had nothing to do with why he was in northern Pakistan.

“The destination was not as important as the journey itself,” Mortenson said.

After an unsuccessful attempt to reach the summit of K2, Mortenson was physically exhausted and the local Korphe people nursed him back to health.

It was after they showed him such hospitality that Mortenson made a promise to the community.

“I knew that the real reason I came to those mountains was not to climb K2, but to build a school,” Mortenson said.

As he regained his health, Mortenson began to see a community in need of education. The literacy rate was less than 3 percent and the village could not afford the $1-a-day salary needed to pay a teacher.

Mortenson left Korphe and set out to gather funds. He returned to his home, Montana, and wrote nearly 600 letters to celebrities and business leaders. He received a $100 check from Tom Brokaw and that was it. He submitted 16 grant proposals and they were all rejected. So, he started selling his possessions. His car and his mountaineering equipment sold for $2,000. School children in Wisconsin raised $623 in pennies to aid his efforts.

Eventually, Mortenson raised the $12,000 needed to build a school and he returned to Korphe.

“They were somewhat astonished that this guy, who sort of stumbled on their village a year ago, actually cared enough to come back and build a school,” Mortenson said.

The building of that first school taught Mortenson that the local people have to be fully engaged in every aspect of the project for it to work. He founded the Central Asia Institute and completed the first school in 1996. Since then, Mortenson and members of his Central Asia Institute have built 28 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Most of the schools have been geared toward educating girls with the philosophy that if you educate a boy, you educate an individual but if you educate a girl, you educate a community. The idea is that women will pass the knowledge to their children where as educated men will leave the village and go to the city to find work.

Mortenson has been met by warm acceptance from the people of the region, even after Sept. 11. One woman offered gifts for him to bring back to widows in New York.

He did not see hatred until he returned to the United States, greeted with hate mail from Americans who were upset with his helping the Afghan people.

“Ignorance breeds hatred,” Mortenson said. “And that is something that can only be changed by understanding and building bridges.”

Holding lectures across the United States, Mortenson has now been met with warm acceptance by the American people as well. After an article on his efforts was published in Parade magazine, he received nearly 14,000 letters of support.

Still Mortenson wonders if he is doing what is right.

“I find that the more I do, the less I know,” he said. “I don’t know if what I am doing is really helping or if it causes more problems.”

But Mortenson said the one thing he does know is that the people themselves know what’s best for them. So, he listens.

‘Ignorance breeds hatred.
And that is something that can only be changed by understanding and building bridges.’