My Path Leads to Tibet: The Inspiring Story of How One Young Blind Woman Brought Hope to the Blind Children of Tibet

by Sabriye Tenberken

Book Overview

Defying everyone+s advice, armed only with her rudimentary knowledge of Chinese and Tibetan, Sabriye Tenberken set out to do something about the appalling condition of the Tibetan blind, who she... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559706945
• ISBN13: 9781559706940
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Story of Hope and Promise

Sabriye Tenberken, at the age of 2, contracted a retinal disease that left her blind at age 13 for the rest of her life. Born and raised in Germany, Sabriye was fortunate to have loving parents who allowed her the opportunity to have the best of care and training, and to luckily attend one of the best schools for the blind money could buy. Never allowing herself to be pitied, assisted, or thought to be disabled mentally or physically, Sabriye considered herself fortunate to have remembered what seeing was like and injected those memories into her daily sightless life, always acting as if she was a sighted person herself. This is her amazing story of a life of ambition and fortitude against the odds to accomplish her life goal as a teacher to other blind children. Her path from Germany leads her to the many blind children of Tibet who are brutally ostracized by their families, left to incur poverty and lack of self worth. Disabled Tibetan children are all too often cast away into the streets to die or become beggars, their families treating them as imbeciles incapable of learning, or vermin to discard. Beginning with her plan to invent a Braille system in the Tibetan language, she quickly overcomes that challenge, and is armed with proof that she can attain her dreams as she found it quite easy to translate her Braille machine into English, Tibetan and Chinese. Sabriye's struggles to gain financial investors, to obtain a backer and location to build a school, and to outwit political and governmental red tape and obstacles, are those akin to what occurred in the recent story of Three Cups of Tea written by Greg Mortenson. Step by Step Sabriye's unrelenting determination to build a school for Tibetan blind children is a tale most uplifting and one filled with much inspiration. To learn about her ability to navigate in a foreign land with nothing but her trusty white cane, to feel the wind in her hair as she rides horses about the Tibetan countryside as she visits village after village seeking out blind children to recruit for her new school, is something to marvel and feel awe at, as the reader simply can't believe her incredible abilities. Sabriye Tenberken is a wonder to behold, and certainly a guiding light to the blind people of this world. She would certainly make any "Sighted" person feel wimpy as we that can see, often do an awful lot of unnecessary whining and complaining about our lots in life. Trials and tribulations certainly played a large part of this amazing story, but against the odds Sabriye and friends attain their prize and the blind children of Tibet are ever so happy to be learning, working, and gaining their self-confidence back. She teaches them to read, write, ride horses, play soccer, act in plays, sing and read poetry. These children become Sabriye's protégés as they too eventually grow up and carry on her role, as she then leaves Tibet to other international frontiers in need of her expertise and assistance to the blin

My Path Leads to Tibet

This autobiographical story tells about the struggles of a young blind woman trying to establish a school for blind children in Tibet. Her ability to meet and overcome obstacles is really inspiring. I feel it is not as well written as it could be, and yet there is something compelling about it that makes you want to continue reading, to find out how it all turns out. I was especially impressed by her determination which I believe stemmed from her sense of call to this mission. That is reflected in her choice of title. She also had a stubborn streak that made her determined to do what she was told she could not do. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading a good, true story.

Amazing story

Sabriye Tenbergen is a young blind woman who has accomplished a great deal. Almost single-handedly, she developed a Braille script for Tibetan, then went to Tibet, where she traveled on horseback, looking for blind children to teach. Before then, blind children were hidden away or abandoned as cursed, with no future, but Sabriye was determined to give them one. So she founded a school where she taught blind children to read, as well as other life skills such as cane travel. She herself got around by cane by using landmarks in the city.This account is just one more example of how the best humanitarian work is often founded by determined individuals with a dream. Conversely, Sabriye was opposed at almost every turn by incompetent and apathetic bureaucrats in organizations both in her native Germany and in Tibet.She clearly loves the land and people, but is not "blind" to the reality either. The country is frightfully cold in winter as well as being prone to floods. And she noted many of the superstitions that harm the wellbeing of the people. But she noted the strengths as well, e.g. Tibetans designed houses to cope well with the cold, while the Chinese made concrete boxes that are hopeless. [Reminds me of the opposite in sub-tropical to tropical Queensland. The early settlers designed open-structured "Queenslanders" that caught the breezes very well, but later architects in New South Wales and Victoria designed houses that became convection ovens in Queensland]Sabriye has a way of writing that seems very visual, so sometimes it's easy to forget she's blind.

Won?t give up

This book tells the story of a young woman with an impossible dream, and how she set about accomplishing it. Tenberken was born with vision problems that led to complete blindness by the time she was a teenager. Once while she was in middle school, she and her class visited a special museum exhibit about Tibet. From that point on, she was fascinated with Tibet, and when she started university, she decided to major in Asian languages with the goal of going to Tibet. Pursuing a major in Asian languages is quite difficult for any Westerner, but even more so for a blind Westerner, since Braille materials and computer software for language study in these languages are limited, if they exist at all. Indeed, Tenberken ended up creating her own Braille system for writing Tibetan script (which proved so useful in her studies that she was even able to use her class notes to tutor sighted students in her classes). Upon graduation from university, she set off for Tibet by herself to found a school for blind children and teach them how to read and write using her Tibetan Braille alphabet with the goal of allowing them to be integrated into regular schools once they became literate. The very thought of just picking up and moving to a country that happens to be occupied by a communist government and establishing an independent school for unschooled children, especially when you yourself do not have teaching experience, sounds positively ludicrous. Fortunately for the blind children of Tibet, Tenberken doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the phrase "you can't do that"- -perhaps a result of her upbringing, since her parents obviously supported her endeavors, or perhaps a simple character trait that drives her.In a few places in the book, Tenberken's style is a bit stilted, or she seems to gloss over details that beg to be explained. She carefully avoids any mention whatsoever of the political situation in Tibet, since any hint of criticism would no doubt result in the immediate closure of her school and the undoing of all of her efforts. In any case, she taught her students Tibetan language from the start, rather than only sticking to Chinese. The book is quite interesting for its story of how one determined person can have a tremendous impact on the lives of many, many others.