His next trip was to northern India. All-in-all, he went there, three times. From there he went to Africa. His heart jumped for joy, every time he saw a child’s face when they connected to the world via the Internet, for the very first time. He felt that girl’s had a right to equal education. If they were willing, to take the risk of learning he would run the risk of being a Knowledge Smuggler.
He continued to grow at church. From time to time they invited him to speak. He was never comfortable with that and thought others were more qualified. He avoided it like a bad cold.
His relationship with Ellie-Jo and Heather continued at a distance. He would visit at Christmas time but wanted to see more of them. Ellie-Jo’s work schedule always got in the way.
He felt jealous when he learned that Heather would spend some weekends with her grandma. She lived the same distance away from Ellie-Jo as Tank did. However, grandma had a car. The government took away Tank’s driver’s license when he had the stroke. It was impossible for Ellie-Jo to take her down for a visit then drive back up to work and then back to pick her up again.
Tank thought about his ability to care for Heather if she were ever to come for a visit. Ellie and Ellie-Jo knew little of his new-found abilities. All they remembered was a broken man falling down the stairs. They never saw his growing clarity of thought. Still, it was perhaps a wise and natural mistrust on their part. Tank, who knew his capabilities felt the sting of being left out. Before long, an invitation to go to Pakistan came in the mail. There, Malala Yousafzai, terrorists, shot her in the head, because she wanted, equal education for all. Two men boarded her school bus and shot her at point-blank range. She survived and would not be defeated. Often as Tank thought about the risk of knowledge smuggling, he pondered Malala’s words. “The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions,” she said. “But nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear, and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born.” He began a fund-raising project. The goal was a dozen laptops and a server for a school. It would not be any ordinary school. Not one run by the government or dictated by Al Qaeda or the Taliban. One that is open to education for all. As he researched Pakistan, their culture, and the people, he began to fall in love with the nation. Money poured in from many sources. Companies donated computers. Smaller churches did what they could. It wasn’t long before he had both the airfare and the equipment. His research was still not over. People who have known poverty all their lives bring with them some issues. Many ministries told him to show caution. It’s not beneath leaders to receive gifts from the West only to sell them after the donors leave. They justified their actions by saying, the daily needs of a child is more vital to their future. Those people are the ones who feed a man a fish every day. Tank 's main concern is in teaching the people how to fish. In that way, they would know how to feed themselves for a lifetime. When people in the East have nothing, they look to the West and see only dollar signs. When he took computers to India, they donated them to the ministry school. In that way, if the teacher using the computer left the ministry the equipment would stay with the school. That bothered some people. They wanted to get them for personal gain. Other ministries wanted to set up great swelling, meetings for him. Naturally, Tank, of course, would be the one expected to cover the cost. Those expenses were so high and all designed solely to line the pocket of the host.