Tonight I had a bit of time to read a few chapters from Three Cups of Tea. The book is the story of a former mountaineer who dedicates himself to building schools in Pakistan. It is a very similiar story to one of my favorite books of all times, Mountains beyond Mountains. MbM is the story of Paul Farmer, a Harvard educated MD/Anthropologist who dedicates himself to ending heatlh care disparities in the world - and focuses especially in Haiti. I absolutely love two of the messages both theses books put forward. The first is that all human being deserve quality health care and education. These are basic human rights and any numerous arguments or reasons to the contrary are, quite frankly, BS. If our country can wage billion dollar wars, surely we can summon the resources to come up with decent schools and medical care for, if not the world's citizens , than at least our own.
The other thing that I admire so much in these stories, is that both of these men have gained a great deal of respect from the communities they work in - because they come without an attitude of superiority, but pay proper respect to the people they are trying to help. They both do things like learn the languages of the people they work with and make efforts to work with local leaders.
I could go off on a little soap box for quite a while....but won't bother. We are all going to sit down and play a board game before the kids sit down to bed. We are having such a great day - Ariel worked this morning while I braved a combo of spin class/swimming lessons/house cleaning/Farmer's Market with the kids. This afternoon when we were all together and we hung around and read and played games. Somehow the kids all managed to get along - I am extremely thankful for days like these.
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