Copping Out

I was just getting ready to develop a book review of Three Cups of Tea when all heck broke loose over Greg Mortensen and the Central Asia Institute. I was going to do a very positive review of the book and state publicly that I was ready to donate money to the institute.

Now…well, I don’t know what I think.

I know Mortensen says the book is factual. I know fact-checkers say some incidents didn’t happen, several of the schools that have been built are going unused, and teachers haven’t been getting paid lately. I heard someone say on PBS that there are no receipts, no audit records, and Mortensen says he is probably not the best administrator for the institute.

For what it is worth, here are my responses to these statements.

I think most of us have noticed that writers cannot leave the facts alone. If they think it makes a better story to compress two or three incidents into one, they will do it. It is still true for them, even if it isn’t quite the way everything happened. It is called artistic license. Mortensen did not write the book by himself; one David Oliver Relin is also listed as a co-author, and I have no idea which man did what to the story between the actual happenings and the account we have read.

So we live in an excessively mean-spirited time, and I hope it runs its course quickly. We need to move on to better and more positive things.

As for the management of the Central Asia Institute, even I would know to leave paper trails, keep receipts, and so on, and it is only good procedure to have regular audits just in self defense, if there is no other reason for it. And the only training I’ve had in such things is what I have picked up in office jobs. I’ve had no formal training in administration of anything.

Mortensen has admitted he is not much of an administrator. If the portrait in the book shows him in anything resembling an accurate light, you couldn’t expect him to be a good administrator. That is not what he would be good at. That part of it did not surprise me. There are a number of poor administrators who have good intentions and simply know nothing about what good administration does. It does not mean they are dishonest.

Just recently I had looked up the Central Asia Institute online and found a rating site that gave this charity a four-star rating, which included numbers about how much of the money raised actually goes to its programs.

But then that person on PBS said there are no audit records.

And I heard someone say that for the CAI, “programs” includes promoting Mortensen’s books.

So I am not sure, now, what I think. I am going to shelve the book review and wait to see what happens. I found it an interesting and even compelling story when I read it. Right now, I choose to say no more until the situation becomes clearer.

I hope Mortensen and the Central Asia Institute are for real. We need people to do such work in the impoverished parts of the world.