Iola school children —and the rest of town — might soon be thinking peace every time they pull a penny from their pockets.
In conjunction with Iola Reads’ spring selection — “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson — schools will feature jugs to collect “Pennies for Peace,” proceeds going to the non profit’s efforts to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mortenson founded Pennies for Peace after failed attempts to convince wealthy celebrities to donate to his cause. Instead, American school children who learned of his efforts donated their spare change.
A movement was born.
Mortenson, a mountaineer, literally stumbled into Korphe, Pakistan after abandoning an attempt to climb K-2, the world’s second-highest peak, along the China-Pakistan border. The mountain is in the Karokoram range, one of the world’s most rugged and inaccessible regions.
Balti people, Muslims with cultural roots in Tibet, live in the mountains’ lower reaches and of late have become porters to high altitude thrill seekers.
Mortenson, once such a climber, was changed by his encounter with the Balti after becoming disoriented descending the peaks. Nursed back to health by Balti villagers, he vowed to repay the kindness by returning to build them a school.
HIS ORIGINAL promise has led to completion of 140 schools as of December, said Gail Dunbar, who, with other Iola school librarians, saw Mortenson speak in Kansas City in December.
Many of the schools are specifically for girls, who were not before educated in Asian Islamic communities. The most recent are being constructed in Afghanistan. There, our pennies can go further, Mortenson noted; $600 can pay one teacher’s salary for an entire year; $5,000 supports an existing school for one year.
DUNBAR SAID the collection jugs will be placed in schools beginning Feb. 12, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. School libraries will also show videos about Pennies for Peace and Mortenson’s school-building efforts.
Other activities will vary at each school. At elementary schools, students have been listening to their teachers read them “Listen to the Wind,” a picture book version of Mortenson’s story. Middle schoolers are perusing the young adult version of “Three Cups of Tea.”
“There are many more photographs in the young adult book and that appeals to students,” Dunbar said. In addition, Mortenson’s daughter Amira, now 12, writes her own segment of that book.
Adult versions of the book are available at all Iola Reads book locations, Including Iola Pharmacy, Family Physicians, Iola Public Library,Allen County Community College library, Iola City office, Iola Vision Source and more. Book numbers are already running low, said IPL librarian Leah Oswald. “Be sure to bring them back after you read them,” she said.
Books are purchased through a grant from the Sleeper Family Trust, and a $2 donation is asked for those books that are not returned.
ACCC librarian Steve Anderson will lead an adult book discusssion at 7 p.m. Feb. 23 at the Flewharty House, Dunbar said. Young adult discussions will be held in the schools.
DIALOGUE is an important part of Mortenson’s mission.
“He had a number of slides with him of joint chiefs of staff and U.S. military leaders,” Dunbar said, noting “Three Cups of Tea” is now required reading for military personnel going to Afghanistan.
“It’s important to understand that culture when you’re going there,” Dunbar said Mortenson told them.
“Recently, he was finishing up a girl’s high school in Afghanistan,” Dunbar relayed, “and a number of heavily-armed tribal leaders came. He was uncomfortable with that, but they came because they wanted him to buld a school” for their own village.
“But before that, they wanted him to build a playground. They never had a childhood and they wanted that for their children,” she said Mortenson told them.
“They ended up putting down their weapons and all playing on the playground” at the school Mortenson was finisshing. After watching them joyful on the equipment, Mortenson agreed to buld their school, Dunbar said.
AS A CULMINATION to the 7-week-long Reads, Diana Farmer, who has worked in Afghanistan with Kansas State University, will show photographs and talk about her time there. She will also answer questions. Farmer will speak at 7 p.m. March 11 in the Iola High School lecture hall.
Farmer was in Afghanistan “advising them about their libraries” in November 2008 and June 2009, she said. She was also helping select library materials and “offering training sessions to faculty and some graduate students on how to do research on the Internet.”
“KSU has two World Bank grants to work with Kabul University,” she said, “rebuilding the engineering and English language and literature departments. Their curriculum is very outdated.”
While in Afghanistan, Farmer visited Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province. It is home to “the blue mosque,” she said, “the tomb of one of the religious leaders of one of the sects of Islam.” The mosque is believed to entomb Hazrat Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Muslim prophet, Mohammad.
Culturally, Afghanistan is very conservative, at least toward women, Farmer said.
“I did have to wear a scarf and keep my head covered,” she noted. “The clothing I wore had to cover me from the wrist to the neck and also my ankles.” In addition Farmer said, “the clothing also had to be loose and not form-fitting.”
Things are only slightly more relaxed at the University, she said.
“When they would come in for a class the women would sit on one side of the room and the men would sit on the other,” she said. Outside the University, men and women who were not married couples could not be in the same room at the same time, she said.
Kabul University has no women teaching in their engineering department, Farmer noted.
Though her lectures had mixed audiences, they accepted her as a teacher, she said.
“Most of them understood the cultures are different and they were happy to get the information,” she said.
Farmer said the school’s English department is “their equivalent of our French language and literature department.” And, she said, “they teach them English as a second language.”
For those who want to major in the subject, “they do have texts and information about English literature,” Farmer said.
Farmer noticed “a lot of improvements in just that six or seven month period of time,” between her visits, as far as development of the country goes.
She will present a PowerPoint presentation of both her trips, she said.
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