Three Cups of Bitter Tea

I read an amazing and uplifting adventure story of survival that leads to a humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism. It is the story of Greg Mortenson, a mountaineer who makes a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2. After, he has an encounter with impoverished mountain villagers in Taliban territory who nurse him back to health, and promises to build them a school.

Over the next decade he builds 55 schools. He focuses on ones for girls. Education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth.

The book is Three Cups of Tea  which chronicles Mortenson’s quest. It sounds like a noble mission, but it brought him into conflict with both Islamists and Americans.

The book's title was inspired by a saying Haji Ali shared with Mortenson: "The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family..."

I read it in 2007 and it was inspiring. It is hopeful. It became a bestseller.

But then in 2011, there were challenges of the book and allegations about Mortenson.

Author Jon Krakauer is an author I admire. He wrote Into the Wild, another adventure story that ends in tragedy that is one of my favorite non-fiction books. he wrote Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster.

Krakauer alleges that a number of Mortenson's claims in the book are fictitious. He accuses him of mismanaging funds meant for the schools.

Is Greg Mortenson a selfless humanitarian and children’s crusader? Is the person who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?

Krakauer interviews former employees, board members, and others who have intimate knowledge of Mortenson and his charity, the Central Asia Institute.

Krakauer publishes Three Cups of Deceit and unravels Mortenson's story. He questions the motivation for his crusade's inspiration to repay the kindness of those villagers who helped him when he became lost and ill on his descent down K2.

Was he really abducted and held for eight days by the Taliban?

Has his charity built all of the schools that he has claimed?

This book is sad because I believed in Mortenson's story.

All of this reminded me is some ways of the story of Lance Armstrong and his deception as a bike racer and how it affected his charity work.

The good deeds are real and the people who work at them are not part of the deception. Or are they? Where does the good become evil?

All of Jon Krakauer’s proceeds from the sale of Three Cups of Deceit will be donated to the “Stop Girl Trafficking” project at the American Himalayan Foundation, so I don't think he is in this to make a profit.

The space created between these two books is a very uncomfortable space for me. It is that space where someone or something you admire falls from grace. You don't want to believe the bad news, even when the evidence is presented to you, you still want to believe in the good part of the person and the cause.