Erwin Franzen's Page

Please visit -- www.threecupsoftea.com -- the web site for a book of the same title: Three Cups of Tea . It is an extraordinary story about an American, Greg Mortenson, who has built a few dozen schools - for both boys and girls - in northern Pakistan, Afghanistan and nearby Muslim areas in Central Asia. The book is really fantastic and touched me a lot because I know and love that part of the world. I spent 2 weeks in Baltistan (home of K2, where Mortenson began his amazing adventure) in December 1987 looking at the work of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, which was then the only development project in the region. I also interviewed a Balti lady who worked with the AKRSP to try to help the women in the villages. I wrote a big article and that interview for our paper, the Middle East Times, and I think they also appeared in the New York City Tribune, which usually republished my work. That time I got an idea of some of the big problems faced by the people in the region and the enormous need of so many things, including education. For a number of years afterward I kept feeling I had to return to that area to try to help with whatever I could, and I often talked about going back to Baltistan -- though I did not have any real vision or idea of what I could do there. Now that I have read Mortenson's story I feel that he has been doing exactly what I should have done, and much more than I could have done.