This is an amazing story of a guy who, by chance, comes to a mountain village in pakistan and ends up becoming a movement which is to impact the lives of thousands of children in those areas. I came across this book while I am leafing through our office library for strictly non-technical books (actually, if you check carefully, you see my name on all the non-technical books in our office library). It's a brand new book and I am the first one to take it. At first, it looked pretty much like a management book and I was not keen about that sort. But, what caught my attention was the words on the cover... an american mountaineer working in Pakistan building elementary schools. Wow! that's an interesting one. I took the book and am very happy with it.
This books talks about how an american mountaineer Greg, who works as a nurse for a living comes to pakistan trying to summit mount K2. After failing in his attempt, he looses his way and chances to come to a village where people takes care of him to recover his strength. He promisses to build a school for them after he sees how thae kids in that village struggle to study out doors in cold with out books, pens, slates or even a teacher to monitor them. He returns to america and tries to raise money enough to build a school in those mountains. After a lot of struggle he finds an other mountaineer who is rich enough to sponser the whole project. He goes back only to find lot of other villagers around the village trying to make him build a school for them. And the actual village(Korphe) is so high up and in accessible that they can't transport the material to build the school with out first building a bridge. He manages to build the bridge first and with the help of the villagers and goes back to America to raise funds for the school. The rich donor again helps him and he finishes the school successfully. Mean while, He realizes the need of schools in and around the area and starts an organization to raise funds for it and works on this full time now. The rest of the book talks about how he struggles with the life shifting between US and pakisthan and how he establishes a trusty relationship amound pakisthani people and how he continues to build school after school in such volatile situations.
What I liked best about the book is the naivity with which this guy reaches out to the tribes people of pakistan who are so hard to please. And also how fearlessly he continues to work in those areas even after the 9/11 attacks. How he travels in those hostile environment to afghanistan. This really amazed me and I just couldn't stop reading it until it is finished. A truely wonderful real life adventure. Some one said that this guy will get a nobel peace prize.... I dont know how far it is possible, but I will be very glad to encourage such recognition. I call him a Hero ! a true Hero !!!
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