This podcast is brought to you by Cipla Foundation and Score Foundation.
Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to Eyeway Conversations. My guest today is Sabriye Tenberken, a visionary, a pioneer, a leader and a go getter. So Sabriye, I was reading about you and it was interesting to note that very early in life, while you were probably in your university, you got interested in Central Asia, Mongolian, Chinese and Tibetan as languages alongside your education in sociology and philosophy. So how did you get interested in Central Asia?
I think my first interest was more in adventure, I wanted to have a very adventurous life. And I wanted to travel and I wanted to write about it. And yeah, then I thought so what could I do and I also thought of going into development work. And so maybe asked the Red Cross to volunteer and of course, they didn't want to have any blind people because they felt it was a risk factor. And just by chance, I went into an exhibition on Tibet. And the people from this exhibition in Germany, they were really really nice. And they opened all the trains and the glass cupboards, and they gave me all these beautiful items in my hand and they explained everything. And, yeah that was the point where I thought, well, if this is something I could study, I could go there, I could learn the language, I could travel through to that and I could maybe do something meaningful into that. And that's how I became first of all interested in Tibet. Later, after high school, I decided to go for Central Asian Studies. And that was Tibet, Mongolia and then later also a little bit of Chinese.
When you decided to take up this discipline, you had problems with communicating in the language and especially as a blind lady, studying Tibetan, you had a problem and you had a solution. So what was that?
I needed to read, right? I needed to read books in Tibetan. To be able to read faster and so to be able to write something down, I needed to create something new. And that was when I started to think of this braille system, that was a very easy thing to do. I mean, I knew braille. And I knew the Tibetan system, and I just had to combine one with the other. And, yeah, and in one or two weeks, I got it done in such a way that it was one to one translatable. And that's not so easy because even for sighted people to translate Tibetan into the Latin script, they need a lot of rules. But for braille, it was actually quite easy because I created some signs that are standing before the main consonant and standing after the main consonent, it goes a little bit, I mean, I should not go into details. For people who know the Tibetan script, they can actually learn the braille script very very easily because it's so much linked or so connected to the actual script so it's very very logical. And I wanted to do it in such a way because I thought one day, we will be able to translate from the compute into Tibetan braille. And therefore I needed a very logical, easy to transcribe script. And yeah, later of course, we had programs where we just used FDS and JKL to type in Tibetan into a computer. And on the screen, it showed in black print, in Tibetan black print and on the printer, it came out in Tibetan braille.
After all this action at Bonn in the university, you decided to actually go to Tibet. And you've also written a book, which talks about your journey to Tibet and your exploits in Tibet.
I went first to Beijing and then I went to Sichuan, and from Sichuan, I wanted to go by horseback because I love horses and from early childhood onwards. I'm a horseback rider and I fought because everybody was riding with horses in this area so why shouldn't I. I even bought horses but that was not a very successful thing to do because then people, the officials, they said that foreigners are not allowed in this area. Because there are a lot of bandits and there are lots of dangerous roads and landslides and so on and so forth. So I had to sell my horses or give them back. And then I went just by flight from Sichuan to Tibet, to Lhasa. And then in Lhasa, I met a lot of people, interested people who felt that this was a good idea, to travel through Tibet and to look for blind people. Actually see, this is something the first idea was or the first interest was adventure. Only later, I thought just adventures a bit little right? And I wanted to do something meaningful. And then I thought, hey because I have this braille system already, why not I try to find out whether there is such a system and if there's no such system, why not thinking of a school for the blind. And that's what I decided to do. So I decided to travel through Tibet, on horseback and find blind children and convince parents.
If you know of anyone with vision impairment, who needs guidance on living life of blindness, please share the Eyeway national toll free helpline number 1800-532-0469, the number is 1800-532-0469.
So, when you met the blind parents and the children and so on, I believe that it all ultimately resulted in a school, probably the first school for the blind in that region.
Yes.
What's the story there? How did you actually find the resources? How did you get local permissions because I'm sure there would be resistance from the bureaucracy and so on.
Yeah, the interesting part was, they asked me questions like, "why you?" Now why did I trust myself? I didn't even finish my studies yet. I couldn't just say, okay I'm a Tibetologist because I was still one year before doing my final examination.
You were work in progress.
Yes, exactly. And I was not even sure whether I wanted to finish it because for me, going to Tibet and doing something was much much more interesting. So the question why you was a very important one. And the only thing that came to my mind at this point, and I think that saved everything was well, I became blind at the age of 12. I learned to be confident with it. I learned to embrace it. I learned to take my own life in my own hands. And this is exactly what I wanted to give to blind children here in Tibet as well. Now, they didn't have anything to counter. And they gave me all the papers that I needed with all these beautiful Chinese red stamps because I said, well, the first thing that I have to do is raising funds. And for that, I need the papers. I need the permission to come back. Before I went to Germany and Europe to do fundraising for this whole school idea, I met someone who became very very important in my life. I mean, I met a lot of people, I met a lot of NGOs. And most of the people that I met, they were thinking I'm talking nonsense when I told them that I wanted to start the first school for the blind in Tibet. And yeah, one person was there who was a backpacker. He came from Holland, is an engineer and yeah, he had interest in helping NGOs in their technical obstacles. And this was Paul and Paul became my partner. And that was a very very important part or important point in my life because I think without Paul, I would have never ever gone through so much difficult, so many challenges. And it's not because he's sighted, that's always the wrong perspective or perception of people, right? He's not my guide dog. He's not my eyes. We are very complementary, but we have different kinds of interests and different kinds of talents.
So you were lucky to run into Paul at a backpackers lodge in Lhasa, great! And then the school in Tibet was established and you chose or you moved to Kerala, God's own country. So what's the story there?
Yes, first of all, I have to go one step backwards. In Tibet, it was already in 2002 or 2003 when we thought, we will not be forever here in Tibet despite the fact that we started not only a school, we also started the farm on 4000 meters altitude, ecological farm which was run by blind people with a cheese factory and a bakery and all kinds of professions that blind people never did before. We also discovered or detected several blind students of ours who had the ability to run all these places. And we felt we needed to go on, we needed to do something so. But very very often, we also asked ourselves because we went through so much struggle and so many obstacles in our lives that we felt, we would have needed some kind of coaching. So luckily, we were two of us. And we were both stubborn enough, and maybe also naive enough to just do, right. We made a lot of mistakes and we ran into a lot of pitfalls. But also, we did some things well and I just want to come to the points that we did I feel we did well. I think we are good communicators. We are not shy, we can talk in front of big big crowds. And we can talk to just one person just like what I'm doing right now for you, right? This is something that is very very important. The other thing that was very important, I feel that we are reliable. When we say something, we do it or we communicate that for whatever reason, we cannot do it beforehand. So people were counting on us, and people could count on us. And this is something that is not everywhere the case, right? And then of course we believed in our dreams and we went step by step. And we also were not afraid of failures and this is also very very important in especially now being in India and looking at the school system here. And people are very much trained for success stories, not for failures. Nobody learns how to fail gracefully and to stand up gracefully, and to learn from their failures. And I think Paul and I, we were lucky enough to not be afraid of failures, and to just try it out and to risk something. So now we thought, what if we had gone to a kind of a center school, a training center beforehand, that gave us the tools and the methodologies to at least start? Of course, everyone goes through their own obstacles. But what if we could have had a coach, somebody who could have facilitated, somebody who could have given us the strength and the courage to further believe also in crisis situation? What if we had an ear to listen to us in crisis situation or a shoulder to cry on? Who knows what it means to start and run a social venture. And that's why we came to the idea to start kanthari and kanthari is a training center for social visionaries for people who have a vision, and people who have gone through difficulties in their lives but have survived these difficulties, who are resilient enough to survive. And people who are interested to turn all these mistakes they made or the failures they had or the challenges they had, the adversity they overcame into something beautiful into something that helps us as a society to thrive in a social way, or in an environmental way. So we started to look for a place somewhere central in this world. So we knew Tibet would not be the place where people could easily go to and, of course also, geographically, it's not so easy to live there. It's very cold in the winter and it's very hot in the summer. So we thought of some someplace central in the world. And what is more central than Kerala, of course you are in North India but you are a Keralite, right? And you might be able to empathize with our ideas. So our idea was, if you look at Kerala, if you look at the south, the southern tip of India, and you draw a circle, and you make the circle just big enough, and bigger and bigger and bigger, you have Africa in there, you have whole Asia in there. And these are the places maybe yeah, South America is a little bit outside. I'm sorry for that. But these are the places where there is a lot of social change, and a lot of environmental change needed. But where there are these resilient people who have to protect their own projects in their own hands. We were not for people going somewhere, for development workers going somewhere, not having any idea what they are doing, and just changing the people or changing things. We wanted to get the changes, the solutions, the interventions, the ideas out of the countries, or from the people in the countries themselves, in the problem zones themselves. And we wanted to just give them the tools and the methodologies, how to put their ideas and their solutions into reality. Now Kerala is really a little bit of a paradise. And we thought, this is the right place to create social change makers that are making changes from within, and we call it kantari. And now you of course, you're a Keralite, you know what "kanthari" is right? kanthari is a very very small but very spicy chili that grows wild in the backyards of Kerala. And it is not only spicy, it's also medicinal. So in the ayurvedic medicine, that has a lot of meaning. And, yeah this kanthari, we see as a beautiful symbol for somebody who has fire in the belly, who has the guts and the braveness, to do something, to not only talk but to actually be useful for the world, to contribute to the world. Most of our kantharis, by the way, we have already 242 kantharis from 50 different countries here, social change makers, who 60- 70% of those are running their own social or environmental projects now. And most of them have limitations in one way or the other. They are either disabled, or are discriminated because of their skin color. Or are women in a very patriarchal, in a very violent society, or are street children, were street children, are not worth anything, or are in war countries, or have been child soldiers or have been kidnapped by terrorists. So most of them have gone through really difficulties in life. And all of them who are successful in running their social and environmental projects are actually valuing or cherishing or are grateful for what happens to them. And this is very very important for me, it's a very important lesson.
To support our work with the blind and visually impaired, you can visit the donate page on our website www.scorefoundation.org.in. Please note www.scorefoundation.org.in.
In fact, I just wanted to ask you, you know you come from Germany and at the age of 12, you had retinitis pigmentosa. I think we in India would love to know, how did your family and friends respond to you? And what was the kind of support systems and learning opportunities that you got when you lost your sight?
Yes. Well, I have to say, I had remarkable parents or I have remarkable parents, they're still alive. And why I say this- they didn't do much. They were just not over protective. They didn't control or they didn't feel that they had to control my life or control that nothing bad happens to me. They always had the courage or they gave me the courage that I had strength to pull myself out of the mess. Of course, they saw that the process of becoming blind was not an easy one. For me, it took me three years to get over it. Three years of really being not happy, hating the way I was, hating my people around me, hating the condition I was in, and not being actually at all satisfied with what happened to me. That was also because I was very isolated, before I had a lot of friends and suddenly, I didn't have any friends anymore. So it was not an easy time at all. And my parents were not taking it away from me. They said, you'll have to go through this but it will make you stronger, eventually. And they were right. Now, why are my parents different than many other parents, also many other parents in Germany, it's not only India, right? They are not typical German parents. They are actually artists. My father is a musician. My mother is a theatre director and my brother is an artist too. And for artists, I think they always think in solutions. Even out of the most gross situation, they can make something beautiful, right? And they can make something very very cherishable. Yeah and they even thought, well we don't know what it means to be blind. What can we judge? How can we judge? How can we just tell her this is a miserable life? No, we cannot. And I was also lucky to be able to go after it became blind to a decided to go to school for the blind. And in the meantime, I saw a lot of schools all around the world, that are made for the blind. And I still must say that this school where I went is one of the very very best and I feel I would love to have a school like that in India for blind children that empowers the blind so much. That is not looking at the limitations but is actually looking at the possibilities. We had a lot of sports, we had teachers who were very very passionate. They were not necessarily special pedagogues. They were very passionate teachers who were sportive by themselves. They were skiers and whitewater kayakers. And they said, well if we can ski, recite, why not try it out being blind. So they created their own methodologies and known technologies to be able to go in a whitewater kayak when you are blind or downhill skiing once you are blind or acrobatic on a horse once you're blind. Of course, riding a horse is easy because the horse can see but to do acrobatics, to jump on a running horse, that was something else and they created these methodologies for us. I would wish that we in India had such a school where children are not taken out of math classes after eighth grade, which is happening here, unfortunately. Where children can do math, where children can do science in a very high quality way, where children learn climbing trees, cutting their own coconuts, surviving in the jungle. And whether they are blind or not have a wonderful and adventurous life, which is not controlled by parents who are over ambitious and over protective. So it is actually possible and I would wish that we in India, where we have so many blind people where we have the highest number of blind people in the world, have a new attitude towards blindness, have an attitude of we can do it. We can not only just compensate but we can actually see the possibilities in blindness and the opportunities in blindness and that would be so fantastic. So maybe there's somebody out there who'd like to run the school, or who would like to talk to me about starting such a school, which would be a modest, maybe even an international school where people from other countries from Europe from America could come to study as well.
Sabriye, thank you so very much for giving us the time.
Thank you.
And wish you the very best in pursuing these dreams. Take care.
Yes, thank you!
This podcast was brought to you by Cipla Foundation and Score Foundation.