Odd Train of Thought
(No Robert content here; sorry.)

The set up for this train of thought was a Nepali couple walking around Mall with backpacks on. I saw them this morning when I was heading home from a parent/teacher conference. They looked much like I imagine Western trekkers look like wandering the Himalayan foothills. It was a very nice transposition, in my mind.

This afternoon, I was walking down by the river and noticed what I took to be a small secret service detail out and about with someone important. That being somewhat unusual in Old Town and me playing with Twitter (one of the latest and greatest Internet ideas), I “tweeted” (that’s what you do on Twitter) a little note about seeing that unusual sight.

Doing that made me think about the book I’m currently reading, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time. It’s really a fascinating read that I highly recommend about a mountaineer who, in the process of fulfilling a promise to build a school in a remote Pakistani village, discovers the need for lots of schools and more infrastructure in that part of the world (beloved by serious mountaineers for the Himalayas). You can support this worthy cause on the web site of the Central Asia Institute — buying the book helps too.

One of many memorable moments in Greg Mortenson’s quest to educate the poor covered in the book takes place shortly after the US started bombing Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. He was flying out of Pakistan, where he happened to be during the attack, and across the aisle in the plane was a bearded man wearing a black turban staring out of the window with binoculars. When they flew over the lights of ships below, the man pulled a satellite phone out of his pocket and headed to the bathroom.

The point of the scene was that the Taliban (and by extension extremists, and by further extension terrorists) are very resourceful. With most of their infrastructure wiped out, they used commercial flights to keep track of the US Fifth Fleet. I briefly wondered if these days my tweet might be seen as a bad thing: reporting the location of someone important enough to have a security detail.

The book resonates for me because of Mortenson’s belief that the best way to fight extremism and terrorism is through education — that’s not why he started building schools in late 1990s, but it became apparent as he spent more time there. Showing the poorest of the poor that there is something to live for seems to me to be the only way to fight terrorism.

That belief in the value of education is also driving another project I’ve been reading about: One Laptop per Child. Another worthy cause, that is trying to better education for the world’s poor.

That was an odd train of thought to run through my head while looking at some folks in suits trying to not to stand out down by the Potomac on a lovely, warm day.

-David