In 1993, you tried to climb "the Savage Mountain," K2, in the Himalayas, as a tribute to your youngest sister, Christa, who had died the year before. Although you were a very experienced climber, you became lost on your way back down, and found your way to the village of Korphe, in Pakistan. Could you tell us what that was like? What was your condition at that point?
Greg Mortenson: Coming off K2, I was utterly at the limits of my physical and emotional abilities. I was weak and emaciated. I was stumbling. I was somewhat incoherent. I had to walk five days. I got lost off the trail. I spent a night out in the open. It was a quite high altitude, and I remember I had rope burns, so I had an infected arm. Didn't have any food with me. And I remember waking up in the morning, looking up at these beautiful mountains. And then there was a gorak, which is like a raven, circling over me like a buzzard. And that kind of got me motivated to get up and keep moving down the trail. I had to walk five days to get to a village so I could get a jeep and go back to civilization. But the word "failure" was also really resonating in my mind. And it seemed as if my boots were so heavy. Because I felt... I didn't feel light and free. I felt as if I really had let Christa down. And then it became more of a survival to get back to the nearest village, so I could get help.
It was a very cold autumn day. The leaves were changing. You could smell, in the autumn, the fires, the juniper and the sage fires. You can smell the wisp of that coming up from the villages. So I finally got outside a village called Korphe. And about 50 kids came and started tugging on me and said, "Please come to our village." But first you need to talk to the chief and get permission. So when I got to Korphe, there was a very elderly, stout, squat man with a silver beard. His name is Haji Ali. He had his hands crossed like this. And he kind of looked at me. First he said, "As-salaam Alaaikum," which means "Peace be with you." Then he looked at me. He shook his head. And he said, "Cheezaley?" And the best translation I can think of the word cheezaley is, "What the heck?" And I was weather beaten. My pants were ripped. I hadn't had a bath in about 80 days. And he said, "Son, before you come to our village, you need to take a bath." So he took me down to a river, washed me up. It's a very silty, icy cold river. And I first went to his house for tea, and I experienced this incredible hospitality.
It's the Balti people who live in these villages in the Karakoram Mountains. The Karakoram Mountain range is the greatest concentration of high peaks in the world. There are 64 peaks above 23,000 feet high, in a 100-mile area. The Balti people have lived there for 600 to 800 years. They migrated originally from Tibet. They're very isolated, cut off from outside influence to a large degree. And in the village, they gave me everything they had. They put their blankets on me, they would massage my legs with yak butter. They were just hovering around me, just really concerned that I wouldn't make it. Or they just really wanted to help. Finally, I regained some strength.
I went behind the village one day. I saw 84 children sitting in the dirt. There was about five girls and 79 boys. And most of the kids were writing with sticks in the sand, and the older kids were helping the younger kids. And then I had looked around, and I didn't see a teacher there. And I thought, "This is very strange. We've got 80 kids here and no teacher." And they said, "Our teacher, Master Hussein..." -- master means teacher -- "...is in the next village, Munjung, because we can't afford his daily one-dollar salary." And then a young girl named Cho Cho came up to me. She was about seven or eight. She said, "Could you help us build a school here? It's very cold. Could you just please help us build a school?" I had seen a lot of poverty in my life. I grew up in Africa. And I've seen development, so those kind of experiences really shouldn't affect me to such a degree, but when I looked into her eyes, I saw such a purity and such a kind of resilient determination to ask me for help. So I made a promise. It was kind of this "eureka" moment, but I said, "I promise I'll build a school for you." And little did I know that I'd changed my life forever.
When you returned to the United States, how did you go about fulfilling your promise?
Greg Mortenson: I didn't have any money. I was a grad student. I could work as a trauma nurse, so I could earn some income pretty quickly. And I'd figured out in Pakistan I'd need $12,000 to build a school. So I had no clue how to fundraise. And I've been criticized for this sometimes. People say, "Well, why didn't you do this or this?" But I did the best I can. And probably, based on my childhood experiences, the first thing I did is I went to the library, and I looked up books on how to fundraise. Then I talked to the resource librarian. And she said, "Well, let's look up the name of some celebrities and movie stars, and you could write them a letter. And maybe they'll help you out." So we looked up the names of 580 celebrities and movie stars and sports heroes, and I hand-typed 580 letters. I didn't know how to use a computer at the time. So I hand-typed these letters very kind of fastidiously over the next ten weeks. "Dear Sylvester Stallone..." or "Dear Michael Jordan..." and it didn't seem that bad. But guess what happened? Nothing happened. Then I sold my car. I sold my climbing gear. I sold my books. I sold pretty much everything I owned to raise money for the school. And by the springtime, I'd only raised $2,400. I had about $10,000 to go.
I was working, and I was putting aside some extra money, but I also had to buy a plane ticket, and I had to finance some other things in addition to the school.
In the spring of '94, my mother, who's a principal in an elementary school in Wisconsin, invited me to come and talk to the kids. It was my first time I'd ever spoken to anybody about building a school, and very inspiring. And when I got ready to leave, a fourth grader named Jeffrey came up to me, and he looked at me deadpan in the eye, and he said, "I have a piggybank at home, and I'm going to help you raise money for that school." I didn't think much of it. I went home, and six weeks later, my mother called me up and she said, "Westside School has raised 62,340 pennies, $623.40." And when you think about it, it wasn't adults. It wasn't celebrities, it wasn't movie stars, it wasn't sports heroes. It was children in their innocence and purity reaching out to children halfway around the world to build a school. And they did it with pennies. A penny is worthless in America, but in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a penny you can buy a pencil. It's not that a pencil's so important, but what education does is it gives a child and a community hope. And if you have hope really, you can do anything. So I had a little bit of hope.
Finally, I ended up raising the money and went back to Pakistan in the fall of '94. I got the school supplies. I went three days up the Karakoram Highway on a big old Bedford truck. And then we got up to the village. And there was Haji Ali again to greet me. "As-salaam Alaaikum," which means "Peace be with you." And then again, "Cheezaley?" He said, "You know, we didn't think you were coming back to the village. And not only that, you brought the school supplies. But Son, you've made two big mistakes. First of all, we don't start building right before wintertime. And number two, if you really want to build a school, we have to build a bridge first." So I hadn't calculated that into the equation. So I had to come back to the States, raise $10,000 more dollars. I went back a year later. And in ten weeks, I built a 284-foot span bridge over the Braldu River.
It's an amazing engineering feat. There are five 800-pound steel cables that they carried 18 miles up the mountain trails on big spools to get this bridge built. So the bridge got built. I came back to the States, September 13th, 1995. I was 38 years old. I was a bachelor. And all I could think about was school and work and getting this one school built.
I was at a fundraising dinner in San Francisco, and one of my childhood heroes, Sir Edmund Hillary -- who was the first guy who climbed Everest and set up many schools in the Himalayas -- he was speaking. But he got kind of long-winded. And he kept talking about the Queen's coronation in 1953. He had gotten a knighthood and was honored by Queen Elizabeth. So I went to the back to get some fresh air, and there was a beautiful woman in the back. She was wearing a dress and black combat boots. Her name was Tara. I started talking to her, and six days later, we got married. And so, 14 years later now, we're living happily ever after in Montana. So it was a beautiful time. We didn't have any money. But I guess it was the first day we kind of knew we were meant to be with each other. And I'm sure glad I waited for Tara. It was the black combat boots.
Of all the things you could have done for the people of Korphe, why did you focus on a school, rather than a hospital or food supplies? Why a school? Greg Mortenson: Part of that is how my ancestors have been steeped into education. My mother, my grandmother, my great grandparents, all were in education. So that is a value I see, having been brought up that way. Originally, I didn't set out to promote education or build a school. I wanted to fulfill my promise first to Christa. And then number two, to Cho Cho and the kids in that school. My original objectives were, "I'm going to build the school no matter what." I was focused on getting the school built, but first we had to get a bridge built. Finally, two years later, the bridge got built. And I went back in '96. This is three years later. We were working on the school.
I spent six months in Pakistan working at the school site. My wife was pregnant. I was completely broke. But things weren't going very well. And the main problem was because I was doing something that we call micromanagement. I have my plumb line, receipts and records. And I was determined. I'm going to get the school built no matter what. One day, Haji Ali, the very wise elderly man -- it was a beautiful day in the fall, and this was three years after I had first promised to build a school -- he took me aside. And he led me to the bluff of the Braldu River, which is looking over the Karakoram Mountains. And he sat me down, and I thought, "This is a time to learn a lesson, I guess." And in very poetic words, but also in quite a harsh demeanor, he said, "We've been here for hundreds of years, and we're so grateful for what you're doing. But Son, you need to sit down and be quiet and let us do the work." And he said it in a lot harsher words than I could probably repeat here. And then he took my plumb line, receipts and records. And he locked them up in this little earthen locker, along with his prayer beads and his Koran and his British musket gun, which were his most valuable possessions. And then he came back, and he said, "There. Everything will be just fine. Don't you worry." Of course, I was horrified. And guess what happened? A few weeks later, the school got built. And it was an important lesson. I had to let go, let the communities be empowered. Let them do the work.
So the Korphe school, the reason it worked was because the communities rallied behind it and did it themselves. They were empowered. And that's on a microscale. It's a little village in a distant mountain valley in rural Pakistan. But I think you can also apply that lesson on a national level. That's one of my main criticisms of the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, which is actually starting to get better, I think, as we learn from our mistakes.
After 9/11, the reconstruction policy in Afghanistan was centralized and deprovincialized. If you look back in history at the Marshall Plan, which I think was a brilliant plan -- it was after World War II -- the architects who designed it, who were from the U.K. and the U.S., I think they were genius. Because the main component of the Marshall Plan was that it was provincialized and decentralized. So in Italy and Japan, it worked really well, because provincial regions were empowered to really have autonomy and responsibility for their own well-being. Had we originally looked at the Marshall Plan and also seen Afghanistan as a multi-ethnic and pluralistic type of society and plugged in more components of a provincially based plan, I think we'd have been way far ahead of where we are today, as we're just starting to learn now.
I love to talk to children and students in America. This is kindergarten all the way through university students and grad students, the U.S. Air Force Academy. And one of the questions I ask the students is, "How many of you have talked in great detail to your grandparents or your elders about World War II or the Depression or the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement?" And in the States, unfortunately, only about ten percent of the kids or students put their hands up. If you ask that same question in Africa or Afghanistan or Pakistan, about 90 percent of the hands come up. And I think it's a tragedy in our society we don't have that oral tradition, or the tradition where we learn from our grandparents. And often some of our core values about our heritage, our folklore, our faith, our tradition, come from our second generation. Perhaps some of that is because we're such a transient society, now that many people are single-parent families, and we don't have more of the extended family type of dwelling. But I think there's still a possibility we could have elder people come into elementary schools and just talk a little bit every week. In our schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, we have the elders come in about two, three hours a week, and they do the story-telling tradition. It's the kids' favorite class, where they can really learn about their folklore and their heritage and their culture.
After you built that first school in Korphe, you had fulfilled your promise. How did you decide what to do next? After the first school got built, I was married. I had a daughter named Amira, and a school built, and a bridge.
I decided at that point that I'd like to dedicate my life to promoting education and literacy, and building schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan. And so, with the blessings of my wife, I decided to start building more schools and getting education started. Our main focus is not in numbers of schools. Today (2008), we have 74 schools. About 26,000 students. We're mainly working with girls' education. But we're not trying to get a lot of numbers. What we're focusing on is where there is no education, and there's usually three reasons why girls aren't getting an education. One is because of physical isolation, they're in such remote areas. Number two, they're in areas of conflict where there's a war, like the India-Pakistan line of control, the border. There are also turbulent areas in Afghanistan. And number three, where there's religious extremism, where Islamic clerics are really opposed to education. So we work very gently by building relationships. Sometimes it takes many, many years. Last year, we started a girls school in a little village called Chunda. It took us eight years to convince the mullah there to start a girls school there. When we started school last year, there were 72 girls in school. Today, there's 340 girls going to school in Chunda Village with the complete blessing of the Imam or the village mullah who was so opposed to it in the beginning.
Why are you pushing so hard to educate girls in this region?
If you can educate a girl to at least a fifth grade level, it does three important things. Number one, reduce infant mortality. Number two, reduce the population explosion. And number three, improve the basic quality of health and of life itself. And just little examples of those -- number one, reduce the population explosion. Bangladesh is a great example. In about the '70s, the female literacy rate was under 20 percent. There was a massive push to get all the females, and the males, educated in Bangladesh. Today, the literacy rate is three times higher in Bangladesh. And if you look at a demographic curve, a population graph, you can see the population in Bangladesh now is just starting to reach an apex, and the population is being stabilized. In Pakistan, the growth rate is just going out the roof. Pakistan has a doubling rate of 26.4 years. It's the fourth fastest growing country in the world. The female literacy rate is still under about 30 or 35 percent, and especially in the rural areas, it's about 10 percent. And unless they have a national initiative to really promote education for girls, the population in Pakistan is just going to continue to skyrocket and double within the next 26 years to 320 million people.
The female literacy rates in some of these countries are so much lower. Is this resistance to women's education rooted in Islam?
Having studied the Holy Koran, the first word of the revelation to Muhammad the Prophet is the Arabic word iqra. And iqra means "read." The first two chapters of the revelation implore that all people have a quest for knowledge. And this is really what the Koran is about, about tolerance, about respect for all people, and also about education and literacy. There is nowhere in the Koran that says girls can't go to school. In fact, it advocates that all people have a quest for knowledge. Also in the Holy Koran, which is maybe of relevance after 9/11, when a young man or anyone goes on jihad, he or she first needs to get permission from his mother or her mother. Usually it's men obviously. If a man doesn't get permission from his mother, it's very shameful or disgraceful. So if a man goes on jihad and he hasn't gotten his mother's blessings, then his jihad is not a noble jihad, and if he becomes a shahid, which means a martyr, he won't get the benefit of what the Koran accords a shahid.
That became after 9/11. The Taliban actually had a high desertion rate. The central core of the Taliban is only about 25,000 people, and then maybe about 60,000 kind of loose adherents, getting paid to be jihadists or fighters for the Taliban. After 9/11, but before the U.S. and coalition forces came into Afghanistan, they had a very hard time getting recruits. So they were going into villages to try and get recruits at gunpoint to fight against the imminent invasion or intervention. But they were mainly targeting illiterate, impoverished societies, because educated women were refusing to allow their sons to join the Taliban.
I met hundreds of women who refused to allow their sons to join terrorists or jihadi groups. Because they say that in the Koran, suicide and the killing of civilians are two of the worst sins that a person can commit. And when a woman has an education, she is much less likely to condone her son to get into violence or into terrorism. That also is true in urban areas in the U.S. You have a single mother, you know, impoverished. Her son wants to get into gangs or drugs or violence. The higher an education a woman has, the more likely her son is to get his GED or to continue on with his education. And I've been also criticized for that. Because a lot of people say, "Well, great. That's all great. But the 9/11 hijackers were all educated." And that's all true, but nearly all their mothers were illiterate. And I doubt that they asked for permission to do what they did on that tragic day on 9/11. I think the other interesting point is, if you look at this somewhat analytically, since 2007, or in the last year and a half, the Taliban and other jihadi groups have bombed or destroyed or shut down about 450 schools. Nearly all those schools are girls schools, very few boys schools. So why is it that a group of men want to destroy girls schools and not boys schools? Because I think the greatest fear is not the bullet, but it's the pen. But even more than that, they fear that if that young girl grows up, she becomes a mother, that the value of education will go on in the community, and they have lost their ideological way to really control the society.
I think one thing that the U.S. is trying too hard to do is to "plug in" democracy. You can't "plug in" democracy. You have to build democracy, and democracy starts first with education. And then the second key ingredient is land ownership. That's very imperative to the right of women's suffrage, or the women's right to vote. We had the same course in our history in America. People came out West. And there was the Homestead Act in 1867. People got 160 acres. If the man died, often the inheritance went back to the family back East. So the woman was left in a very precarious situation. Then came the Land Grant Act, higher institutions, more higher education for women, legal advocacy, which led to the right of land ownership. And if you talk to women's studies professors, they'll say that the single most important thing that led to the Women's Suffrage Act in 1920 was the women's right to own land. The first women to vote in America were ranching widows in Wyoming. The first Congresswoman in the U.S. Congress was Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin. She was a Montana ranching woman. And right of land ownership was kind of a key ingredient.
In the world today, there's 145 million children who are deprived of education due to slavery, poverty, religious extremism, gender discrimination, corrupt governments. If we wanted to, we could give the gift of education -- literacy -- to every single child on the planet. And the investment in that would be six billion dollars per year for 15 years. It's about $30 to $40 per child per year. It's like two or three dollars per month per child. And we could eradicate global illiteracy. And what would happen as a result of that? We'd have reduced population explosion. Women could be empowered in such a tremendous way. Unfortunately, where we put our money is in a lot of other things. So what we spent last year, just in Iraq on the war on terror, we could eradicate global illiteracy. We could do a lot of other things. But I think that education and literacy should be one of the top global priorities.
It is part of the U.N. Millennium Goals which were established in 2000. Some countries are doing pretty well, but we've still got a long way to go. You've spoken about a link between girls' education and hygiene, and how that education has an effect on the rest of their lives.
Greg Mortenson: When I'm talking about education, I'm talking about very basic education. Reading, writing, arithmetic. Our students learn five languages by the time they're in fifth grade. We also, in addition to regular education, we have hygiene, sanitation, nutrition in our classes, the storytelling tradition. But what happens, even if you do not have hygiene, sanitation, nutrition in class in the school, I've been able to see, over now 15 years, how if you go into one village where there's no girls in school. and you go to another village where girls have been going to schools for five years. And you walk into the kitchen, or even into the bathroom, and these are outdoor pit kind of toilets, but you see this -- I don't know what it is -- but this transformation. The sanitation, the way the dishes are washed, the way there's pride in making food and how their awareness of public health, and also about recycling of diseases. You know, having clean drinking water not run through their community toilet systems. They use the manure to mulch into their fields to get nitrogen, but you can put that at the bottom of the field, so that your drinking water is coming from a clean source. And a lot of these things don't even have to be taught. But there's this kind of awareness that comes about as a result of literacy.
Two other things that happen are when girls first learn to read and write, they often go home and teach their mothers how to read and write. Their mothers then can start writing letters to their extended family. When a woman is married, often their maternal ties are severed. And so through letter writing -- there's no cell phone or e-mail or any other way -- they can communicate with their families. And really it helps them to be empowered. And the way men in oppressive societies control women is to cut off the support network. The same with a battered woman in the U.S. They cut off the support network. The other thing that happens is you'll see kids coming, or people coming back from the bazaar, from the marketplace, and they have vegetables or meat wrapped in newspaper. And then they very carefully unfold the newspaper, and the girl will start reading the news to her mother. There is some radio, but that power of bringing the outside world, through word and text, into the community, all of a sudden that woman becomes part of a regional or global community. It's a very powerful force.
They seem like very simple things, but they're very changing events that happen in a community. Investing in education is the most if you want to call it bang for the bucks.
Some economists calculate that one dollar -- just one dollar -- invested in the education of a girl in the Third World, the return rate after one generation -- about 20 years -- is about $18. You cannot get any other such an effective investment for value than educating a girl in society. You know, you can build a dam or you could invest in weapons of war. Or you could invest in public sector infrastructure, roads. But the most tangible economic return is girls education.
You mentioned your childhood in Africa. Can you tell us about that?
Greg Mortenson: I went to East Africa, Tanzania, when I was three months... six months old in 1958. We grew up on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. My father started a hospital and my mother started a school. It was an incredible place to grow up. It was post-colonial, it was a new democracy, the game parks were just starting to come into being. I got to go to school with children from two dozen different countries. My friends were Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs. I call it a paradise. I think it was the most incredible place to grow up. Also, it didn't have television, we didn't have a phone, no library. So my window to the world, like Google or the Internet today, was the Encyclopedia Britannica and National Geographic magazine. And I would pore over the Encyclopedia Britannica in my bed at night with a little flashlight. And that was kind of how I got to learn about the outside world. When my father got the hospital, Kilimanjaro Medical Center, built in '72, we came back to the States. I was 15. My first day in high school, St. Paul, Minnesota, I got beat up. Because the kids... I said, "I'm an African." And there was some confusion about that. But you know, it's the first time in my life that I learned what the word "racism" meant. It was the first time I learned about prejudice, and it wasn't in Africa, it was here in America. And four days after high school -- we were completely broke -- so I joined the U.S. Army, not only to serve my country, but to get the GI Bill. It was actually in the Army where I met men and women from all across America and I realized that this is a great country, not because of our commonality, but because of our great diversity. So I was very fortunate to grow up in a very cosmopolitan kind of global community in Africa.
What kind of student were you? Greg Mortenson: School was hard for me. I had to work hard. I did fairly well. One thing that I really enjoyed was learning other languages as a child. My father was also very gifted in languages. He had a hard time in school. He was an athlete. He worked his way through college, but it was mainly through sports. I struggled with school, but I also worked very hard at it. I can empathize with people who move to this country. Coming back to the States was actually a very difficult transition, not so much academically, but socially, and adapting to a culture of such abundance and wealth. The opportunities in this country are kind of overwhelming in some ways.
One of my childhood heroes was Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who was a medical missionary in the Congo. And he wrote about the sacred. He very much believed in that all life is sacred, plants, animals, all beings are sacred. And also, Mother Theresa was somebody who I really admired. And later on, as I grew older, President Julius Nyerere, who was a very visionary leader of Tanzania. He was a very bold man who was not afraid to take risks. And he was a very big advocate of education. In Africa, where I grew up, I learned a proverb as a child. It says, "If you educate a boy, you educate an individual. But if you educate a girl, you educate a community." And that somewhat sets the backdrop for all the work I've been doing. But I learned as a child how important it is that girls are also given the opportunity to have an education.
What was your family doing in Africa? Were they missionaries? Greg Mortenson: Yeah. They're described as missionaries. Basically, they were involved in humanitarian efforts to build a hospital, and my mother started schools.
From my early childhood, I grew up watching my parents live a life of service. And to me, I think it's a noble calling, that some people can dedicate their lives to serving humanity or helping other people. There's been a recent trend, more in the '80s and '90s, to think more about our own selves and to aspire to become prosperous. But what's exciting though, that's happened after 9/11, is that I've read now that there's more interest in people, when they graduate, to go out and do something good to change the world, and really make a difference, whether it's education or business or health care. It's very inspiring.
Were you a big reader? Did you have favorite subjects in school?
Greg Mortenson: Since my father used to read bedtime stories to me every night -- just as I do when I'm home with my children -- I'm a voracious reader. I love books. I didn't have movies or TV to distract me as a child, so books were really my window to the world, and some books in particular I remember. One is called Territorial Imperative, but it talks about the relationships of animals to each other. That kind of sparked my interest in science. I'm kind of a dull reader. I like non-fiction, and I rarely read a fiction book. If I had more time, I would. But I love to learn and explore, when I hear about new things, whether it's history or music or the arts or anthropology or global geopolitical developments. I always like to delve into books. Because I find a lot of wisdom in gleaning from what other people think and deduce from what's going on in the world.
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
When was your sister Christa born? Greg Mortenson: My youngest sister was Christa Eliana. Eliana means "Gift of God" in the Chagga language of Africa. She was born in '69.
Christa was a very special sister, but it was because she suffered from severe epilepsy. When she was three years old, she got a smallpox vaccine which was a botched batch of vaccines. So she subsequently had meningitis which triggered off high fever. So she had very severe epilepsy nearly all her life. And she had to take a lot of medication, so it really suppressed her, but she never once complained. She was always very inspiring. She loved to sing. From the time she was three or four years old, she would sing in the church choir. She was a very joyful person. It would take her a long time the night before school to get ready. She would spend an hour. She would do her homework. She would pack her lunch. She would pack, get her clothes ready. I'm kind of the five-minute bed-to-bus kind of guy. I'm out the door and trying to get to school in five minutes. And it was really Christa who taught me about what it is to have courage and to be persistent. And little things for her -- there was such great joy -- she could master taking the public bus system. I remember her getting through some of her first books. We got her a checking account -- and the first check she wrote, she ordered pizza -- and how proud she was to just write a check for the pizza delivery guy. Those things were very meaningful to her.
We were very close with her. Every year I took time off from whatever I was doing, in grad school or working, to spend a month with my sister. I would take her to these wonderful places like Yosemite or Disney World or the Indy 500. Take her down to Padre Island or go to the ocean. Those are very special moments. I'm so happy that I did that. She saw the baseball movie Field of Dreams, which takes place in a cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa. She was very inspired by it. So for her 23rd birthday, she was going to drive with my mother from Minneapolis down to Iowa to see the place where the baseball movie was filmed. She packed her bags.
When my mother went to wake up Christa on July 24th, '92, Christa had died in her sleep from a massive seizure. And we were very devastated by it. For her funeral, many of her handicapped friends came, and the choir. It was just beautiful. We called it "The Joy of Going Home." And I decided at the time to climb K2, the world's second highest mountain, in honor of my sister Christa. I had a passion for mountaineering, and K2 is considered one of the more difficult, dangerous mountains to climb. Christa had an amber necklace that she had gotten in Africa, and I was going to put that necklace on top of K2 to honor her memory. So in '93, after a year of getting ready financially, physically, I went to K2, the world's second highest mountain. We spent 78 days on the mountain with a group of 12 international climbers. I didn't quite make it to the top. I worked really hard to get to the top because of Christa. We spent 78 days on the mountain. It's way past the normal window of opportunity. After about five or six weeks, your body starts deteriorating. So coming down the mountain, I kept putting my hand in my pocket and feeling that amber necklace. And I felt as if I had failed.
You were already a very experienced climber when you attempted K2. How did you first become interested in mountain climbing?
Greg Mortenson: In Tanzania, where I grew up, Mount Kilimanjaro was in our back window. And since I was about six, I begged my dad, "Please. Can I go climb the mountain?" So finally, for my 12th birthday, he let me climb Kilimanjaro. I went with another 11-year-old. And since those early days, I already had a passion for mountains and for climbing. So over time I got more experience. I climbed in many parts of the world. It was something I really loved to do. And I also was a graduate student in neurophysiology, because I wanted to find a cure for epilepsy. So I would climb, and I also worked as a nurse. I got my degree in nursing and chemistry. So I'd work in emergency rooms half the year, and then the other half, I was either studying physiology or mountaineering.
Why did you choose to climb K2, of all the mountains in the world? Greg Mortenson: I went to K2 because it's considered a very difficult mountain to climb. At the time, I was very focused on mountaineering, so I thought, "I'm going to pick a really special mountain for Christa," to climb. Obviously, 15 years later, my priorities have changed, but at the time, I thought, "I want to pick a really significant objective to honor my sister Christa." So I picked K2.
K2 is a very beautiful mountain. In the Balti language, which is of the people there -- it's classical Tibetan -- K2 is called Chogori or Chogor, means "the big peak." It's a very symmetrical peak and granite mass -- you can put 84 Matterhorns inside of it -- but it's kind of reaching up to the heavens. Also, one of the reasons I decided to climb a mountain to honor my sister Christa is that the very same hour that my sister died, I actually was climbing in Mount Sill which is in the east Sierra Mountains in California, and I fell about 800 feet. And the exact same hour that my sister died from epilepsy, I fell about 800 feet down a mountain. And earlier in the day, I had seen a ruby-throated hummingbird up near the top of the mountain, and ruby hummingbirds don't fly at 14,000 feet. Afterwards, I kind of put it together. I think that hummingbird was my sister coming to say goodbye to me. So that's one reason I chose climbing as a way to honor her memory. But yet, I never knew that it would take me to a far greater climb and a more special way to honor her memory.
You say you took a year to prepare to climb K2. What were some of the things that you had to do?
Greg Mortenson: There's a lot of physical preparation, which means doing a lot of physical training to put yourself into an aerobic threshold where, you know, running a marathon but then going on more, so that your body gets used to the continued exertion on your body. There's mental preparation. K2 is much more remote than Mount Everest, and also, we didn't have porters, or we didn't have oxygen. So we had to be able to use our own resources -- in case we had some problem on the mountain -- to get off the mountain. And then finally, it cost about $10,000 for me at the time. So I had to spend time raising money and getting all the gear together, financially and physically and mentally. And also kind of spiritually really, realizing that I took this on as a very serious way to honor my sister Christa. Because I was very devastated when she died. We were very close. I had to really struggle, saying, "Why does the world have such a special person have to leave us?" She was a big inspiration for many of us. So there was a lot of thinking about why this happened. And yet, Christa in all her life was a woman of great joy and courage and faith. So there's all different kinds of things to get ready to climb a mountain.
You had prepared for this climb and invested so much in it. How did you decide to turn back?
Greg Mortenson: After we were on K2 for about ten weeks, everybody else had left. I was just there with three other climbers, and I really wanted to get to the top. I pushed myself way beyond the physical and emotional limits. And it wouldn't make sense at that point to really keep on trying to get to the top. It's kind of like going on a 400-mile journey with 200 miles (worth) of gas. Going up to the top at the beginning, it was almost as if I felt my sister there. And I also visualized -- I really believe in visualization when you set your goals -- so I visualized putting that amber necklace on the top. But I also, as it got more and more difficult, I started thinking. I kept wondering, "How much is this going to take?" And at one point before I started to turn down, I even thought, "I can probably get to the top. I may die, but that's okay, because I'll make my goal." And then when I came down from that -- you kind of go up and down -- when I realized I had been so focused on getting to the top, I really hadn't focused on the bigger goal, that Christa certainly wouldn't want me to die just to climb a mountain in her honor. It was on September 3rd actually. I remember this very vividly. I was carrying some rope up the mountain. And I was up, I was pretty high. And I suddenly realized, I really need to go down, and it's okay to go down. But I felt in my mind as if I'd failed. And I had to come to terms with that.
How do you prepare yourself for what to do when things don't go according to the plan? Greg Mortenson: I've learned over many decades, that it's important to have a very strong intuition. The best quote I can think of is by Judith Campbell: "When your heart speaks, take good notes." I think in the West we're trained or brought up to be very logical and linear. From the time we wake up, we turn our alarm clock off, we switch a light on and off, we open a door, shut the door, we have car keys, we turn the car off and on, the TV. So everything is pretty much controlled. Having spent about half my life in very indigenous Third World societies, people there are much more intuitive, because they don't have that ability to control or micromanage their complete environment. I think that fosters a more intuitive sense.
When I was climbing and mountaineering, I learned also that it's important to have an intuitive sense, as far as climbing. It's important to get in touch with the mountain, to really listen, and kind of feel and think of the mountain as an entity, a living entity. When I was first learning how to climb in more difficult areas, I was on Mount Baker, which is in Washington. This is in the early '80s. There was a guy named Willie Prittie, who was this kind of old mountain man, and we were climbing up a peak called Mount Baker. We were going up the Eastern side called "the Roman nose," and we had gotten up around midnight. We started going up to the top, and all of a sudden Willie said, "We need to go down." And I said, "It's a beautiful clear day. It's crisp. The snow's nice and packed." And he said, "No. We're going down." I didn't understand. He said we just need to go down, and so I listened. We went down, and just as the sun was coming up, the whole Roman nose collapsed. We'd have been dead had we gone up there. So we ended up going up the north ridge. And it really struck at something I've never forgotten. It's about listening to your intuition. As I've done this: I started out to climb a mountain, I ended up stumbling into a village, and then when I saw the kids in this village, I decided to build a school. But most of it's been intuitive. And I never planned to write a book or build schools in Pakistan. But having listened to my heart, it's led me on this incredible journey.
How did the book Three Cups of Tea come about?
Greg Mortenson: I am not a writer. I'm not an author. And I had hundreds of people ask me, "Please write a book". First of all, I don't write a lot. I like to read. I also am so busy with my work, raising money, going overseas, and then running an organization, also trying to be a dad and a husband. But finally, in 2004, after 9/11, I realized that people in America are really yearning to understand more about the societies in Islam. So over two years, with a co-author, we got the book Three Cups of Tea written. I never intended it to become a bestseller. I just wanted to bring a message about what education can do. When I first wrote Three Cups of Tea, I picked the title, "Three Cups of Tea." What it means is -- Haji Ali, the village chief taught me: the first cup, you're a stranger; second cup, a friend; and third cup, you become family. But the process takes several years. And what he means is that in order to do something, you need to build relationships.
So the paperback came out January 30th, 2007. It's been a New York Times bestseller ever since then. The Pentagon has bought several thousand copies to use for counterintelligence training. Christian ministers use it in their sermons. The Islamic community in Chicago is really promoting the book. Several synagogues in Philadelphia are using it as a joint reading. Women's book clubs, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. I think what really resonates for people, one, is that education can make a difference. Everybody believes in education. Number two, everybody wants to have hope. We can't live in fear. We have to live in hope.
You have a number of web sites, including Ikat.org. What's Ikat? Greg Mortenson: The easiest website is threecupsoftea.com. It's our book, and it goes to our Pennies for Peace, and our nonprofit, Central Asia Institute. Ikat is the silk of central Asia. It's also found in Africa, and down in New Guinea, and some of the Aboriginal cultures. Ikat is a silk or cloth that is individually died and then woven together in this beautiful tapestry. We use it to represent the resilience of the people of Central Asia. There's all these strands of different cultures and societies ebbing and flowing. Afghanistan, traditionally, for millennia, has been at the waxing and waning point of empires and civilizations: the Ottomans, the Mongols, the Greeks, the British, the Turks, now the U.S. and others. They've all come together in this one little place on the planet.
There is a saying that Afghan people will tell you, that when God created the world, it was good. And then he took the leftovers and threw them on the ground. And that created the country of Afghanistan. And that's kind of a sad way to describe your people. But also, that is linked to what is universal in the Torah and the Bible and the Holy Koran. It says that the best, the most important thing that a person can do is to take care of the widows, orphans and refugees. And I often see Jewish, Muslim or Christian leaders infer or imply that "God is on our side." But I really think that God is on the side of the widows, orphans and refugees. And unless every single one of those people -- those innocent children, those widows, those women -- are taken care of, that nobody has the right to say that God is on our side.
Do you think that there is still an American Dream? What defines the American Dream for you? Well, the American Dream for me is...
Greg Mortenson: When I first came back to the country of my birth, I was 15. I hadn't spent any time here. And so my first hour in high school, I got beaten up, and the kids put a garbage can over my head, and they started hitting me. And it was because I said, "I'm an African." And it was, as I mentioned, there was confusion about that. And it was very devastating. I wanted to run back to Africa, which I thought was my home at the time. But when I joined -- we were completely broke -- I was 17 years old, four days after high school. I joined the U.S. Army in '75. And it wasn't a popular time to go into the Army. It was right after the Vietnam War. And actually, it was in the Army where I met men and women from all across America, from the inner city, from ranches, from farms, from rural areas and urban areas and blacks and people of Hispanic descent. And I realized that this is a great country. And I saw people coming together. I also saw that there was dissension in the upper ranks about what happened in Vietnam. And that being an American, it's okay to be a patriot. I still get goose bumps when I sing the national anthem. But at the same time, I feel that it's very important that when we feel that our country is doing something, like in Iraq or something, that we can stand up and voice our opinion. And also to listen to the people.
To be an American also is to be able to dream the ultimate dreams. This country is still the greatest place on earth. If somebody who can come from nowhere and be not afraid to have the biggest dream you could try and fulfill, and it could happen. It's also I think a country that we need to -- America really is not so much about being American, but we are a global community. We've come from all over the world, including the natives who first lived here. So we are pretty much a microcosm of the global community. And when we think of ourselves as Americans, I think it's important that we see ourselves as part of the whole global community. I think we also need to export our good values that we have as Americans. We are people of great generosity. We're people of courage. We're people of compassion. That's what people think of individual Americans as. We have that value. And I think when we're looking at policy, ultimately politics isn't going to change the world. It's people who are going to change the world. And it starts building relationships one at a time.
Thank you very much for sitting down and talking with us. Greg Mortenson: Thank you.
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