After watching a slew of Everest documentaries, I came across the documentary Blindsight about a school for the blind in Tibet and how a famous blind mountaineer took some of them climbing near Everest. The woman who founded the school, Sabriye Tenberken, is blind herself and had come from Germany to establish this school and offer a place for Tibet's blind children to learn. It was amazing and I was so moved that I immediately had to know more about these schools! I saw that Sabriye (sorry to be a little casual, she strikes me as the kind of lady who would insist on being known by her first name and not "Ms." anything!) had a memoir about her journey to Tibet and I bought it immediately and read it all in a single sitting.
I don't know that I can offer any comment on this woman's life that can compliment her accomplishments properly. Just a taste of the strength of this woman: she traveled to Tibet by herself with the idea to establish a school to teach braille because she had just created a Tibetan translation for braille. Then she headed into the countryside on horseback with only one companion - someone she met while traveling (she did not bring a 'sighted' companion with her on this journey, feeling that she didn't need one), broke down social stigma barriers related to blindness in encouraging the locals to ADMIT that there were, indeed, blind children (because most Tibetans are Buddhist, they believe that afflictions such as blindness are a penance for sins in a past life, so most blind people are shunned and treated poorly. When researching for this expedition, Sabriye was told by the government that there were NO blind people in Tibet.), then she goes and establishes a school and hires a staff and takes in a group of kids who are so eager to learn that you can't help but read with tears running down your face.
It's truly a remarkable story and Sabriye Tenberken is my hero.
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