Book Review: My Path Leads to Tibet
Reviewed by Barbara Duncan
During her childhood in Germany, one of the few exhibitions Sabriye Tenbekren and her blind schoolmates were allowed to actually touch was a cultural presentation of Tibetan artifacts. This experience made an indelible impression on her young mind. Later as a college student at the University of Bonn majoring in Asian studies, she learned that blind Tibetans lived in appalling conditions. She wanted to find out more but her main barrier was that the Tibetan language had not yet been translated into Braille. So she did it herself.
For most of the next decade Sabriye applied that same level of grit, competence and confidence to:
- Graduating university with little assistance other than her trusty (but loud) Optacon
- Establishing Tibet's first school for blind children
- Developing a curriculum in Tibetan, Chinese and English
- Setting up her own non-profit organization, found on the web at: www.BraillewithoutBorders.org
- Setting up vocational training for her graduates
- Working with her partner, Paul Kronenberg, to spread the success of the school in Lhasa to Northern India, Nepal and other countries
Told in an engaging and direct style, Tenberken's book takes us along on a fascinating journey, full of bureaucratic obstacles as high as Tibet's mountains. She searches out her pupils-to-be on horseback, negotiates endlessly with a range of European, Chinese and Tibetan organizations and authorities, none of whom believe she is capable of creating a school. But, Sabriye and her partner, Paul from the Netherlands, eventually manage, due to a combination of persistence, skills, luck and support.
Readers familiar with the international disability field will not be surprised to learn that some of the stiffest resistance to her ideas is mounted by -disability and development aid organizations. Politics is also an issue - Tibet is part of China and Tenberken seems surprised to learn that even though Tibet has one of the world's highest rates of blindness, the influential Chinese Disabled Persons Federation does not place a high priority on addressing it, having scheduled 2007 for its consideration.
This book can be enjoyed from a variety of perspectives: it succeeds as an adventure travelogue; it should be required classroom literature about disability stereotypes and as a 21 st century update for disabled adolescents looking for role models beyond Helen Keller; and it would also serve as a good case study for the emerging field of disability and development.
In 2000 Sabriye received the Norgall Prize from the International Women's Club, in 2001 she attended the World Economic Forum as one of the selected "leaders of tomorrow," and in 2003 the Queen of the Netherlands journeyed to Lhasa to confer knighthood on both Sabriye and Paul. This well written book was a best seller in Germany and has been translated into 12 languages. The 284 page English edition was published in 2003 by Arcade Publishing in New York (www.arcadepub.com) and benefits from an informative epilogue written in 2002. For blind readers, according to Amazon.com there is a commercially produced audio version only of the original German text, Mein Weg fuhrt nach Tibet. Regarding English versions for those who cannot read print, in the U.S., audio or Braille versions of the book are available for loan to those registered with the Library of Congress service for blind or physically disabled readers.
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