BACK IN AUSTRALIA, WORK QUICKLY RESUMED ITS FRANTIC PACE. Centripetal forces immediately yanked my attention from Himalayan libraries to the competitive world of technology. Microsoft was preparing for a fierce battle against IBM to win the electronic-commerce business of Coles Myer Ltd, the largest retailer in Australia. One could call CML the Wal-Mart of Australia, except that their market share there was larger than Wal-Mart’s share of the American market. During 1998 IBM had spent billions of dollars promoting their e-business initiative. This was yet another case of Microsoft being perceived as “behind the times” during the booming Internet era. Even within the normally overconfident Microsoft Australia, there was a widespread impression that we would lose this contest against IBM.
Not if I could help it. I told Anthony Joseph, the Microsoft sales executive handling the account, that he could count on me to help win the business.
“I don’t want to pitch a technology solution to CML,” he replied boldly. “I want to give them an entire business plan for e-commerce, of which Microsoft’s technology is but one facet. We can do a total end-around on IBM. While they’re trying to explain to the client why their server is better than our server, we will instead be giving the client an entire business plan. It’s simple. We engage the client at a strategic level. We win the business.”
I told Anthony that it was a great strategy, but that writing a business plan to take a multibillion-dollar business onto the Internet was not exactly a simple undertaking. But this was Microsoft, the land of no excuses. We knew there would be no better way to broadcast our e-commerce capabilities than by winning one of the world’s biggest retailers. Within a week of my return from Nepal, I was buried in studying the e-commerce market into late in the evening.
One night my e-commerce studies were interrupted by an e-mail from my father. When my parents had agreed to be the U.S. collection point for our book drive, my father asked how many books I thought they’d receive. “I don’t know, probably one hundred or two hundred.”
Subject: You need to get home soon!
Dear John,
I am writing to invite you to come pay us a visit in Colorado. Your book drive has succeeded beyond any of our imaginations. The UPS guy is here at least twice a day. I have moved one of my cars out of the garage to make room for the books. I think that we have about 3,000 books here, but we have lost count.
You might want to pay a visit home and help me sort through them. I do not know what the schools over there want, and we also need to figure out a way to ship the books over.
Please let us know—your mother says she will make lasagna for you since you will need energy to sort through and pack all these books!
Love,
Dad/Woody
IN 1998, USE OF THE INTERNET AND E-MAIL WAS BECOMING WIDESPREAD, but was not the overwhelming force it is today. The success of our book drive was an early manifestation of the power of this network. Several dozen people had sent me questions, and as I scrolled down, I realized that some of the initial recipients of my mail from Kathmandu had forwarded it to 50 friends, who had then sent it along to dozens more friends. Two years later, we were still receiving mail from people reading my original plea for books. Somewhere in cyberspace, my request may still be circulating.
SIX WEEKS LATER I MADE THE 25-HOUR JOURNEY TO COLORADO. BITTEN by the literacy bug, I had printed off a thick sheaf of United Nations reports on the state of education in the developing world. They made for compelling, yet depressing, reading. As we sped across the Pacific from Sydney to Los Angeles with all the modern conveniences such as movies, cocktails, and hot meals even at 35,000 feet, I read about the sad reality for many of the world’s children.
What struck me first was the UN’s estimate that 850 million people in the world lacked basic literacy. I had to read the number three times to convince myself that it was not too large to be true. The world’s population was around 6 billion people. That meant one out of every seven human beings lacked the ability to read or write a simple sentence.
Of the 850 million lacking basic literacy, the UN estimated that two-thirds were women. This had a terrible carryover effect, as it’s typically the women who are rearing the family’s children. If the mother is educated, it is much more likely that education will be passed on to the next generation. I knew this from my own experience, given that my mother and my grandmother had both read to me from an early age. Too many children in the developing world started life disadvantaged from day one because their mother had not gained an education.
The UN report was not yet done depressing me. The next section revealed that over 100 million children of primary-school age were not enrolled in school. One hundred million. Mao once said that a single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. Now I understood his point.
I was frustrated. These children would not get a second chance—next year or a decade from now would be too late. Somebody should do something! Lack of action would simply perpetuate the problem.
The depressing litany of statistics forced me to begin questioning my project. Helping a small number of libraries serving a few thousand Nepali students would represent just a drop in the ocean of illiteracy. The UN report proved also that books would not be enough. It was obvious that the developing world also needed primary schools, and effective ways to increase female enrollment.
Three hours outside of LAX, I pulled the window shade down for a siesta, and a respite from contemplating a problem that appeared to be much larger than I could tackle on my own.
On the connecting flight to Colorado, my mind switched from focusing on the problem to contemplating the solution. A friend had responded to my plea for books by sending me $100, along with a story clipped from the pages of the International Herald Tribune. The article focused on the Queens Public Library system. It was the busiest in the United States, due to the large immigrant population. The article profiled a recent immigrant from Taiwan—Pin-Pin Lin—who brought her two sons to the library twice a week. She insisted that they read in English rather than Chinese and would check out up to 20 books per visit. I thought of my own childhood library trips, and my parents being just as excited as Pin-Pin Lin about the possibilities inherent in reading.
The article continued, “The extraordinary love affair between immigrants and libraries is a century-old story in New York…. The most crowded libraries have always been in neighborhoods with the largest population of recent immigrants.”
This was the power of Andrew Carnegie’s legacy. He had used his wealth to set up over 2,000 public libraries across North America. Three generations after his death, they were continuing to pay dividends. These new American citizens were fortunate that Carnegie had thought long-term. For the Taiwanese boys, Carnegie had created the hardware, and their mother the software. This bode well for their assimilation and success in America.
Could we do the same for the people of Nepal? How about other countries in the developing world? My travel experiences had taught me that parents around the world are similar at least in one respect—they want their children to have a better life than they have had. I did not possess Carnegie’s wealth. But I had a thirty-year head start on him. I would not wait until I was old and retired. I was still young, and full of energy. In Colorado, spilling out of my parents’ home and into their garage, we had at least an initial down payment on this dream.
I ARRIVED IN COLORADO EXHAUSTED FROM THE JOURNEY. MY FATHER had been awaiting my arrival for weeks. So we dove right in. I had been forewarned, but I was still surprised at the huge quantity of books that had piled up. A number of handwritten notes had been sent. With typical engineer’s precision, my father had saved these in chronological order in a manila file folder.
Dear John:
I received your request for books from our mutual friend Gail Darcy. I want to thank you for doing this. In 1995, I had the pleasure of trekking in Nepal for a month. I was saddened by the crushing poverty and wanted to do something to help the people. But I had no idea how to start. Then your note arrived. I recruited all of my colleagues here at Scholastic, and we cleaned our bookshelves and closets. We’re really happy that these books will find a good home.
Thank you for giving me a way to finally achieve my goal. Let me know if I can help pay for shipping of these books over to Nepal.
Namaste,
Ellen
Another friend of a friend wrote to say that she could not imagine a world without books. She had sent us several dozen Dr. Seuss books, along with money to help pay for shipping. A third note was from a mother discussing how much it meant to her when her children insisted on reading bedtime stories. The e-mail from Nepal, she said, had opened her eyes to a problem and made her all the more thankful that her children’s lives were full of books.
We spent two days sorting the donations that had come in from all of our new friends. The first step was to separate the wheat from the chaff. Thankfully, over 95 percent of the books were usable. We had an occasional laugh over some of the detritus that had found its way to us. My favorite was titled How Computers Work. It was written in 1973.
Our next step was to box them up in a sturdy manner so they could survive the 8,000-mile journey to Nepal. That task reminded both of us of a major strategic gaffe: we didn’t have a plan to get the books to Bahundanda. The school was a two-day walk from the nearest road. Simply writing the school’s address on the boxes and sticking them in the mail was not going to do the trick. I kicked myself for not having thought about logistics in more detail.
AT DINNER THAT NIGHT, MY FATHER PROPOSED A SOLUTION. HE HAD gone online and found contact details for the Lions Club in Kathmandu. He was a member of his local club and proposed that we ask the Kathmandu club for assistance. I was skeptical that a group of strangers halfway around the world would want to work with us.
My mother chimed in, “Woody, I think you might be barking up the wrong dog.”
“Tree, Mom.”
“What?”
“The expression is ‘barking up the wrong tree.’”
“Well, your father knows what I mean.”
After a few decades of marriage, every couple has its own unique shorthand.
My father was ignoring our discussion. He had already gotten up from the table to unilaterally overrule us. From his downstairs office, he sent an e-mail describing our project.
The next morning, as I ate homemade banana bread and read the Denver Post, my father trotted upstairs. He had a reply from Kathmandu:
Dear Lion Woody:
We received today your inquiry about sending books to Nepal. We appreciate your willingness to help our country. The Lions Club of Downtown Kathmandu has two focuses—preventing blindness, and children’s literacy. We would be happy to help your project. When you are ready to send the books, please let me know. I will give you instructions. One of our fellow Lions works in the government, so he can be sure that the books will get through Customs without any delay or need to pay duty.
Because you have so many books, I would respectfully ask that you consider donating them to a number of schools. All of our schools here have shortages, and I believe it would be valuable to help five or ten, rather than just one. This is to be your decision, but I offer it as what I hope is a helpful suggestion.
Thanking you from Nepal,
Lion Dinesh Shrestha
My father was kind enough not to do an “I told you so” dance. Instead, he poured himself a cup of coffee and joined the breakfast table. He said that he had been thinking constantly about this project, and that he wanted to join me in Nepal. He was excited by the idea of helping to deliver the books to Bahundanda and other schools in the Himalayas. I tried to talk him out of this idea by explaining that travel was difficult in Nepal—sanitary conditions were lacking, one slept on uncomfortable beds in drafty teahouses, he would not be able to eat meat, and there would be no television. He commented that he was not aware he had raised such a condescending son, then reminded me that he had survived the Depression and World War II.
There were other concerns I did not share aloud. My father and I have never been overly communicative, and I had a fear of traveling alone with him for two weeks. We had not spent much one-on-one time during my adult years, and I was worried about being together with few distractions. Would we find things to talk about? He had seen the developing world from the deck of a cruise ship, but not in hiking boots and with a pack on his back. I knew he was tough, but still, he was seventy-three. Wasn’t trekking in the Himalayas a younger man’s game?
I stalled. “I’ll think about it, Dad. I am not sure when I will be going over. We should delay a decision for the time being.”
THREE DAYS LATER, I WAS BACK IN SYDNEY. MIDNIGHT OIL WAS BEING burned as we prepared Microsoft’s competitive pitch against IBM. One evening my preparation of the final slide deck was interrupted by an e-mail from my father:
Dear John:
I wanted to let you know that today I posted 37 boxes of books to Nepal. The total weight was 967 pounds [he was always one for details!]. The total cost was $685, so please send me a check when you get a chance.
You should be very proud of this project. It’s going to help a lot of children get a chance to read.
Love,
Dad
PS—Can you please explain to me again why I can’t go with you to Nepal?
A long pause, followed by another read of the mail. Tears started flowing. I felt like such a jerk. Why had I resisted the idea of taking him on this trip, given all the work he had done on the project? I had been thinking only of myself. I had an illusion that it would be best to “travel light” and be free of responsibility for someone who was not experienced at hardship travel in a place like Nepal.
I immediately hit Reply. I let him know that I was sending a check for $3,685. He could hold the extra $3,000 in reserve to buy a business-class ticket to Kathmandu. “We’ll need to give the books a few months to get there. We will follow soon behind. It’s winter there, and I have a full plate of work projects, so let’s plan to go in March or April. I never thought I’d say these words, but—see you in Nepal!”
I shut down my PC and pulled out my journal. Sitting on the living-room sofa and staring at the lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I recorded how thankful I was that my father had pushed back. The book drive had been a father-son project. He deserved to enjoy the experience of putting the books into the hands of the students. The next step was to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience traveling together to remote mountain villages. Bahundanda beckoned.