One Girl at a Time

17th May 2011 Tuesday

My husband leaves the house early this morning for his day in London with clients. Winding down his business - severing his links.

It feels cold in the house, the sky is overcast grey as if it wants to rain but can’t be bothered. I wear a jumper and two pairs of socks and meet up with a dear friend in town for hot chocolate. The cafe is warm and my heart is warmer too in her company.

In the library I choose two talking books on CD for my father. He’s finding it hard to read now with his cataracts getting worse.

On the way home I collect two rare childrens’ books from an auctioneers for a friend who is coming to stay at the weekend. I remember the bookcase we had in the bedroom I shared with my brother when we were growing up - the thick paper of some of the books, their musty smell, the line drawings in ‘Grimm’s Fairytales’, in ‘Heidi’, in ‘Pookie’ ( the flying rabbit), in ‘The Water Babies’.

For lunch I make myself a big plate of salad, mash up half an avocado with olive oil and black pepper and spread it on two Ryvitas with a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds. I start listening to one of the talking books called Stones into Schools by Greg Morteson - the mountain climber who wrote Three Cups of Tea about how he built hundreds of schools for children high in the remote regions of the Hindu Kush in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And how he raised the funds by inspiring ordinary people, mostly Americans, to give him their money.

I’m so enthralled and moved by the story that I stay on at the table with the rain misting outside - eating raisins and cashew nuts, transported into another world. One of Greg Morteson’s aims in building the schools was to educate girls. He quotes an African Proverb,

‘If you educate a boy you educate an individual. If you educate a girl you educate a community’.

My grandfather must have known this proverb too when he built Chipembi School for Girls in Zambia when my mother was a little girl. I love these visionary men who champion us - who are building so much more than schools - building bridges between the hearts of nations - one girl at a time.