Blindness is no barrier
Originally published on The Moon Magazine
Photo by The Moon Magazine
Sabriye Tenberken embodies the notion that “impossible is nothing.” Born in Germany with a degenerative eye disease, she became totally blind at the age of twelve. Shunned by her friends and patronized by her teachers, Tenberken compensated by doing everything she could to show the world she was “just as good” as a sighted person; but she was miserable. It wasn’t until she enrolled in a boarding school for the blind that her attitude shifted. Surrounded by other blind students, she accepted her blindness and learned to focus on her abilities, rather than her disability. In addition to her academic subjects, she learned Braille, swimming, horseback riding, and whitewater kayaking.
After high school she enrolled at the University of Bonn—the only blind student out of thirty-thousand—and focused her studies on central Asia. She soon found that there was no Tibetan Braille script, so she developed her own. It later became the officially recognized Tibetan Braille.
Her Tibetan studies informed her that the blind were shunned and vilified in Tibet, where they believed that blindness was karmic retribution for sins in a past life. So just before her senior year, Tenberken left college to travel—alone—to China. From China she traveled on horseback through rural Tibet, talking to parents about enrolling their blind children in the residential school she planned to open in Lhasa. When villagers saw Tenberken, they at first refused to believe she was blind. Tenberken persuaded them that their children, too, could learn to read and write, and even ride a horse. One astounded father reportedly told her, “The prospect of your school is like a dream for us.”
In 2002, Tenberken and her life partner, Paul Kronenberg, opened their school for the blind, which they named “Braille Without Borders,” signifying their intent to support training centers for the blind anywhere in the world. Tenberken also eventually helped to devise a software system that enables blind Tibetans to type in Braille on a computer keyboard and the text appears on the screen in Tibetan print.
I learned of Tenberken through the movie Blindsight, Lucy Walker’s documentary that chronicles an expedition led by another “impossible is nothing” kind of guy. Erik Weihenmayer is an American mountaineer who became the first blind person to summit Mt. Everest. When Tenberken heard of his accomplishment, she invited him to come to Tibet as an inspiration for her students. Weihenmayer did more: he organized a team of climbers and gear to take Tenberken, Kronenberg, and six of their students to the top of Lhakpa Ri, the 23,000-foot sister peak to Mount Everest. Walker filmed the adventure, and her film left me speechless: I didn’t know whether to cry with grief at the cruelty of life for some innocent children; or with gratitude for people like Sabriye Tenberken, Paul Kronenberg, and Erik Weihenmayer.
Tenberken has received the Mother Teresa Award, the Albert Schweitzer Award, Time magazine European Hero and Asian Hero awards, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Kronenberg kindly assisted us in arranging a phone interview while he and Tenberken were on an advocacy and fundraising tour of the United States in February.
The MOON: What was the most difficult aspect of your adjustment to blindness?
Tenberken: The most difficult aspect was that other people saw me and treated me differently–as if I was not the same person they previously knew. Other kids-even my friends-didn’t want to be my friends anymore. Teachers treated me as if I were disabled. I felt as if I wasn’t accepted as a person any longer, except within my family. I hear this from a lot of blind people-that blindness isn’t the disability. It’s the social isolation that becomes a bigger barrier to overcome than blindness.
Sighted people are often afraid of blindness; they don’t like to imagine that they could become blind, too. They don’t understand that blindness is not the biggest crisis on Earth. But their fear gets in the way of having a relationship with a blind person.
Because it’s very difficult for a blind person to tell sighted people, “Don’t be afraid,” I prefer to tell blind people to develop a new relationship with themselves. For example, I whined for a long time about not being able to ride my bike, recognize my friends from a distance, or see colors-things that blindness had taken away from me. I had to consciously decide to focus on what I could do, rather than what I couldn’t. That became one of the questions I always ask kids who come to our school in Tibet: “What is great about being blind?”
At first there would be a long silence. No one had ever asked them that before. But then the answers would start coming:
“I can memorize much better than my sighted friends.”
“I can read at night in the dark.”
“I got to come to this school, and now I can read and write in three languages.”
For me, it took a long time-two or three years-to realize the gifts blindness had given me. For example, I could really focus and concentrate on what was important to me. I could communicate more clearly. I had to, or become invisible, because people talk around blind people as if we are not there. I became a problem-solver. I was forced to solve my own problems, so I became a problem-solver for other people-and for society-too. My imagination became much stronger.
People have this idea that blindness is darkness, but I don’t know a single blind person who describes their interior world as dark. Through imagination our world becomes much more colorful because we can color it however we like. For example, right now I’m sitting in a friend’s apartment above Central Park in New York City. Because I’ve heard Paul (Kronenberg) praise the view, when I look out the window I see Central Park, covered in snow. I see the lake. I see people moving about.
Although this is an image created in my mind, it satisfies me as completely as the images a sighted person “sees” when they’re reading a book. Often the images will become so clear that they’re disappointed when someone makes a film of the book and the images are different, or less satisfying. Of course, as a blind person, I’m never disappointed by “reality.”
The MOON: Do you ever speculate on what your life might have been had you not become blind?
Tenberken: Yes, of course. I imagine my life would have been very different. I probably wouldn’t live in India, although I probably would have gone out into the world. My mother was an adventurous person, and I have always been, as well. I’d probably have had a visual job-in architecture or art, perhaps. My brother is an artist and I’ve always been a very visual person. Or perhaps I would have become a mediocre actress. I like acting and it was something I wanted to do before I became blind. But I probably don’t have the drive or competitiveness that would have propelled me to success in that field.
This may sound surprising, but I think it’s a blessing not to have too many options in life. Limits can be very fortunate. They let you focus on what is necessary; on what is meaningful. It’s very important for everyone to have meaning in their lives, yet it is not expected of blind people that they will make meaningful contributions. Quite the contrary, it is expected that they will become a burden to society, dependent upon charity. But I was fortunate to have a philosophy teacher in high school who asked us, “Is there life after high school?”
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Part 2:
Originally published on The Moon Magazine
He encouraged us not to think of it in terms of a profession because that would limit us. It would direct us into paths that have already been established, rather than give us freedom to create our own paths. Instead he encouraged us to think of what we loved, and what we wanted to contribute. So, for example, I love languages, even though I am not very good at them. To learn languages I really have to work, but working enabled me to develop discipline. I also love to travel; I love to have adventures, which a lot of blind people are not permitted to have; and I want to contribute something meaningful to society. That’s how I got the idea of pursuing development work. It combined all the things I love.
I thought I’d ask the Red Cross for an internship-not realizing that the Red Cross would interpret my request as another burden; another problem for them to solve: how to give a blind person an internship. So again, there was a limit that forced a decision. I could either fight my way through a closed door, or find another way. It’s really not my style to impose myself where I’m not wanted. I generally prefer to find another way. So I decided to start my own organization and send myself into the field. That’s why I say that limits are very useful.
The MOON: And why did you send yourself into the field in Tibet?
Tenberken: (Laughs) It was definitely not a spiritual journey. I’m not a religious person; I wasn’t on a pilgrimage. Tibet was a way to test my limits. It’s a wild place. I imagined I’d have a lot of challenges and adventures: mountains, white water, horses, new languages-all things I love. So at first Tibet represented adventure to me. Once I started the school, however, my motivation turned into responsibility for the students I was caring for.
The MOON: You love white water and horses?
Tenberken: I was a whitewater kayaker in high school, and I also rode horses as a small child.
The MOON: Wow. You say you’re not a religious person, but pursuing both of those activities blind would seem to me to require faith.
Tenberken: It’s a matter of knowing the tools and techniques and I had brilliant teachers. Regarding kayaking, for example, you have to acquire the skills-how to keep your kayak pointed downstream, how to sense whitewater, how to roll and right yourself, how to get reoriented if the river spins you around; how it feels when you’re in a hole; what to do if you’re swamped by a wave. Once you have the tools, then whitewater becomes a dance and there’s no fear. I like the feeling of being very awake and focused on my surroundings, and whitewater kayaking puts me into a situation where that’s required.
Visual cues are eighty percent of a sighted person’s perceptual input. Since blind people don’t get this input, we have to make an effort to reach out to the world and engage it. It’s the same situation with horses. I learned how to ride as a child and I have an understanding of horses-particularly of difficult horses. I know when to give the horse the lead and when to take it back. I learned that from a female Canadian jockey I rode with on a two-hundred-kilometer trip. We brought four horses-only one of them trained-through a mountain pass. I was riding an adolescent stallion. He would jump on anything that looked or smelled like a female, whether it was a horse in estrus or not. Once, he and I fell from a bridge into the water below. We were not hurt, but the experience rattled both of us. So, from then on, he was insecure; I was insecure. Finally, the jockey told me, “Look, you have to give the horse confidence”-despite the fact that my feet were dangling over a ravine. So I realized that there was a give and take required, depending on the situation.
Horses understand that I am blind and that I can’t see the best path to take. Animals sense a lot. Sometimes the horses don’t want to go with me because they know I can’t see, so they will stand very still in the hopes that I won’t choose them. Other times, if I have something in my pocket that is of interest to them, they will come up and nudge me. I had one horse who knew me so well he wouldn’t pass under low-hanging branches. I was impressed by that. Horses definitely sense fear; that’s why when I was crossing mountain ranges in Tibet, for example, my job was to not be afraid so that I could reassure the horse.
I trust horses, it’s true, but I also have a lot of trust in human beings. It’s required of blind people. So often we’re in a city or some other strange situation where we have to ask for help. We can’t see the person we’re asking, so we have to trust them. I was full of prejudices when I was sighted. I judged people by their appearances and wouldn’t talk to someone-let alone entrust myself to them-if I didn’t like the way they looked. Now I don’t do that.
The MOON: In your book you describe crossing a mountain pass in Tibet and at one point, the horse leapt across a ravine so wide and so deep that your stirrup broke loose and you heard it hitting the rocks far, far below. The ravine in fact was so wide that the other members of your party-the sighted members-wouldn’t cross it and you had to wait for them to find an alternate route. Were you aware that the horse was going to jump? Could you sense it and know to hold on?
Tenberken: No, I didn’t get any advance warning. But being blind is really ongoing practice in being prepared for anything. With horses, I have to be ready for wildness, bucking, or jumping, without being afraid. This is also a skill that has come in useful in my work in developing countries-how to be flexible enough to anticipate anything. You can’t assume that the road will be paved or unobstructed, or that the trains will run on time, or that the water and electricity will flow. You just don’t know what to expect.
The MOON: In whitewater kayaking, however, most kayakers can see what’s ahead. Do you feel the river-through your legs, for example? How do you know you’re not about to head over a fall?
Tenberken: Most sighted kayakers don’t see the river that well, actually, especially at the beginning, which is why there are so many accidents. A professional kayaker can interpret the river more accurately, whereas beginners often interpret their visual cues wrongly. But yes, when you’re relying on your tactile senses like I am, your thighs, the paddle, all give you information about the currents. You also rely on the echoes of the water coming back to you from the banks, from the boulders. You hear the stones rolling, you hear water splashing on rocks. You can differentiate quite a lot. If it’s a river you’ve ridden before, you can often find the high line of the river and follow it down-just as if you were floating in the river, you’d put your feet first, protect your head, and let the river take you where it was going. In rivers I don’t know, I generally go with a double in a two-man kayak. Once, though, I went down a new river alone, assisted only by guides on the river banks who were shouting to me. The river was so loud that I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the fact that they had enough faith in me to let me do it gave me a big confidence boost.
The MOON: I first learned of you through the documentary Blindsight. Please tell us what “blindsight” refers to.
Tenberken: I’m certainly no expert, but I believe “blindsight” refers to the phenomenon in which the visual cortex interprets whatever sensory stimuli a blind person receives-such as sound, smell, or touch-as visual images. A blind person not only “sees” the images in their mind but feels as if the images are “out there” and being viewed by the eyes. I don’t feel as if I’m imagining the scene of Central Park, for example; it feels as if I’m seeing it, though I “know” I’m not. It’s not very well-researched, and not many people seem to have it, although my brother, who is sighted, seems to have a version of it. He walks through the dark as if he can see what is there-which is what he says his experience is. He feels as if he’s seeing.
In the film, however, I believe they chose the title “Blindsight” to refer to making a film reflecting the viewpoint of blind people-or at least a small group of blind people-as well as the “blind spots” of many sighted people.
The MOON: The documentary recounts your efforts to take a group of six blind teenagers up Mt. Everest’s sister peak of Lhakpa-Ri. Did that effort lead to the outcomes you hoped for at the outset? Was it a positive experience for the teens? Would you ever do it again?
Tenberken: For us the main goal of this trip was not to summit Lhakpa-Ri. We were more interested in the journey itself: building friendships, experiencing the ups and downs of a team under difficult conditions. Also we wanted the students to lose the fear of their home environment. While a blind child in New York has to master crowded streets and subway stations, a blind child in the Himalayas has to learn how to walk on uneven paths, in snow, on ice, and how to stay safe in stormy weather. We are very grateful to Eric and his team to give these children an opportunity to discover the beauty and the challenges of their motherland. Would I do it again? I’m not sure. I am not a mountaineer. I’d rather go down a river in a boat, or a raft, or go down a mountain on skis.
The MOON: What has happened to the kids in the film?
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Part 3:
Originally published on The Moon Magazine
Tenberken: Kyila, the blind teenager from the Everest region, is now running her own kindergarten for blind and sighted children. Gyenshen, the one who loves books, is now running the Tibetan Braille printing press and the library and he teaches Tibetan, English and Chinese Braille. Sonam has successfully graduated from a regular high-school and is now at a university in mainland China. Tashi, Tenzin and Dachung are all in the medical massage business. Tenzin and Tashi are running the biggest massage clinic in Lhasa and they are selling cold drinks on the side. Dachung, the smallest of all, became a very successful entrepreneur. He is running three medical massage clinics in Lhasa, is a classical flute player and he is now interested in starting a hotel.
The MOON: The name of your organization is “Braille Without Borders.” I was surprised to learn what borders the name refers to.
Tenberken: It’s first of all a take-off from “Doctors Without Borders,” which provides medical care to everyone, without regard for political borders. But Paul and I also use “Braille Without Borders” to refer to the mental borders that people—whether sighted or blind—have created about blind people. These are the borders we want to get rid of. We didn’t want our organization to be about providing charity for blind people. Braille Without Borders is about empowerment.
Braille is also a very important tool for opening the world for blind people. Braille is underestimated now that we have audio books and voice-recognition technology. But Braille is the real substitute for reading in a way that hearing is not. Listening is not reading. Braille is very important for creating visual images in the brain. With it, the tips of the fingers can create direct connection to the visual cortex, just as the eyes do when a sighted person reads. For example, I wouldn’t try to understand a difficult political or philosophical text as an audio book; I need to stop and think about what I’m reading. So for that I really need Braille. Also, Braille provides a connection between form and function, which is missing from an audio book.
The MOON: You teach your students to be entrepreneurs—to go into business for themselves. Yet I’ve also heard you express frustration with the current trend to social entrepreneurship—as if businesses, or the business mindset can solve all our problems. Will you please tell us more about that?
Tenberken: We don’t teach entrepreneurship in Tibet. We teach students to have employable skills so they can take their own lives in their own hands. For younger students, our goal is to enable them to integrate themselves into regular schools—we call it self integration—without the assistance of a special needs teacher, which can become a barrier to entry if the school doesn’t have one. We teach our students Tibetan, Chinese, and English skills in both speech and Braille. We teach them communication skills, such as facing people when they talk to them. We teach them problem-solving skills so that they don’t rely on the teachers to solve problems for them. Our students have integrated themselves into local high schools and are doing very well. Some are now going to university: they have passed the entrance exam along with mainstream students.
We also have a vocational training center to give people skills with which they can employ themselves. So we have students learning to run a shop, or a tea house, or a restaurant; we have students running massage clinics, a hotel, producing cheese, publishing books in Braille—they are doing all kinds of things. In fact, Braille Without Borders in Tibet is now run by the students themselves, which has always been our wish. They even do part of their own fundraising.
The MOON: And now you have a new organization, kanthari.
Tenberken: Yes, kanthari—which we always spell with a lower-case “k,” to emphasize that we have a flat organizational hierarchy—is the name of a very small, spicy, and medicinal chili pepper that grows wild throughout the backyards of Kerala, India. kanthari chilies are purifying, lower blood pressure, aid in digestion, and confer a sense of alertness. Paul and I thought they were a very nice symbol for a new type of social entrepreneur—one who comes from the margins of society, who has overcome adversity and not been crushed by it, but has, in fact, been strengthened by it. This type of social visionary now has a “fire in the belly” to change the conditions that have oppressed him or her. Once you’ve been oppressed by social ills, you want to do something about them.
We believe that this type of motivation is much more sustainable over the long haul and it’s never “top down,” but very “bottom-up.” It creates change from an insider’s perspective. In our experience, development projects often go wrong when they’re created by outsiders. Instead, kanthari tries to change development work by giving insiders all the tools they need to make changes themselves.
It’s always more credible when social justice work is led by those most affected by the injustice. I had credibility advocating for blind people, for example, because I am a blind person. If I wasn’t blind, people would have far more easily dismissed my aspirations for the blind children of Tibet as unrealistic. But I was living proof that blind people can take care of themselves, earn a living, and contribute meaningfully to society.
One of our kanthari graduates is a former street child from Lagos, Nigeria. He came to kanthari very angry at NGOs who try to get street children back into the very homes and schools they ran away from. His perspective is that people who want to help street children should look at what they’re good at: survival; entrepreneurship; being part of a team. He set up a project to build on the potential of street children to fend for themselves and now works with street children to empower them to become successful businesspeople.
Another kanthari graduate, Ojok Simon, is a blind beekeeper from rural Uganda who was upset that rural villagers are often lured to the cities in search of jobs, depleting the countryside of the very people needed to feed city dwellers. Ojok is now teaching beekeeping skills to other blind, rural Ugandans, and also training urban street children in honey and wax harvesting. This provides livelihood for the children and helps to “green” Uganda’s cities through the creation of rooftop gardens and other green spots.
The MOON: What is the kanthari curriculum? How do you train your participants?
Tenberken: kanthari is a “spring board,” not a training center in the usual sense.
Rather than instruction, we immerse students in a hypothetical version of the project they want to create, and we have them support each other in overcoming the obstacles that are likely to arise: lack of funding, corrupt ministers, an unsympathetic banking system, hostile communities, and all the other challenges that are awaiting them. As they address these problems, they learn proposal writing, public speaking, fundraising, banking, social media, navigating bureaucracy, whatever they need—often through failing. Because they’re failing together, however, with the support of a group, the failure isn’t crushing. They learn that they can brainstorm a way around the obstacles—and many times, the failures will force them to expand or change their project so that it is better and more successful in the long run. We believe this is a crucial skill for development workers—how to use failure or setback to your advantage, rather than allowing it to frustrate or defeat you.
The MOON: Tell us about the Dream Factory.
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Part 4:
Originally published on The Moon Magazine
Tenberken: The Dream Factory was part of Braille Without Borders in Tibet, but we’re making a global “dream factory” with much bigger dreams and ideas through all of the projects we’re supporting as a result of kanthari. The concept behind Dream Factory is to look at limitations, not as a boulder blocking your path, but as something you can step on to reach higher. Limitations often force dreams to become much bigger—and ironically much more realistic—as a result.
The story I like to tell is of a blind boy whose dream was to become a taxi driver. But he was blind; he couldn’t safely drive a car. Then he realized, “I can own a taxi company.” His dream got bigger—and more realistic, as a result.
Often participants come to kanthari with a fairly modest dream. Through the kanthari process, however, they rip their dream apart and put it back together—and it’s often bigger, and more difficult, but also more achievable because now it’s big enough to capture people’s imagination. If it’s big enough, other people want to become a part of it. Your dream gets more interesting, more exciting, and more people want to make it happen.
For example, another kanthari graduate wanted to bring fresh vegetables to the people of remote Spiti Valley, near the India-Tibet border, which is inaccessible due to snow for six months of the year. The children suffer from several nutritional deficiencies as a result, and they are not able to go to school for six months each year because the schools are concrete and bitterly cold. Thuktan, who is from Spiti Valley, dreamed of creating a greenhouse and growing vegetables and herbs throughout the long winter. That was a nice dream, but after going through the kanthari process, he ripped it apart and created a bigger dream: a greenhouse school made of glass, where students could plant their trees, vegetables, flowers, and herbs, which would be watered by a ditch flowing through the greenhouse, with little footbridges, butterflies, and the children’s chairs and desks nestled among the greenery, surrounded by a view of the spectacular snow-capped peaks and brilliant blue skies of the Himalayas.
Now Thuktan is not only working to build one or two greenhouse schools in Spiti, but we have already been contacted by people from Mongolia, Siberia, and other snow-bound parts of the world where they have sunshine and cold, but lack vegetables and fuel for heating western-style school buildings. They want to build greenhouse schools too.
Ideas are what change the world, and kanthari is an incubator for ideas. Participants bring their baby ideas and grow them into bigger, better ideas.
The MOON: How many people have participated in kanthari since you began?
Tenberken: We’ve had five graduating classes of about twenty students a year, so in five years we’ve created ninety-eight alumni. All participants attend kanthari on a full scholarship, plus they receive start-up funding for the first year of their project. We have a very diverse group of participants each year. We don’t care so much whether an applicant has had formal schooling, although some have Ph.D. degrees. What is more important is that they have overcome some significant difficulty and have a goal to make the world a better place. That’s what we call the “fire in the belly” that motivates people to question harmful conventions. These are the people who create lasting change, we believe. Politicians want to be everyone’s darling. You can’t transform injustice that way. Our goal is to empower the people who are already battling injustice. They’re already in the fight; we help them succeed.
The MOON: Many of your alumni have become social entrepreneurs, which brings us back to the question of the role of business in solving the world’s problems.
Tenberken: Social entrepreneurship is fine, as far as it goes, so long as the actual social change is not forgotten while struggling to become profitable. And not every problem should be approached from a profit motive. Schools, for example, are investments in a better world. That’s the motive, and that’s the pay-off. People call Paul and me social entrepreneurs, but we’re not. We are not business people. We didn’t create kanthari to make money; we’re not motivated by money. Social change is worth doing whether or not it creates revenue. Justice is worth pursuing whether or not it makes money. Gandhi didn’t liberate India to generate revenue. Nelson Mandela didn’t overturn the apartheid government of South Africa to make money.
That’s why the kanthari logo shows five chili peppers—each a different color—because kantharis come in five different colors and each has a different medicinal value. We dedicate the hottest kanthari—the red one—to the social change agents, the activists, like the albino woman in Kenya who speaks out against the killing of albinos. I’m a red kanthari too, fighting for the right of blind people to not be treated as if they’re disabled. Red kantharis are willing to speak unpopular truths to change prevailing attitudes.
The green kanthari is not hot immediately, but it warms up on you. We call these kantharis the initiators—like our graduates who are starting schools to empower the marginalized, or the ones who are implementing environmental projects. They lead by example. They will change society over time.
The yellow kanthari we dedicate to the inventors—those with technical skills who think outside the box and use technology to create social change. My partner, Paul, for example, has been greatly inspired by the work of architect Laurie Baker, who uses low-cost materials to create beautiful, high-quality, environmentally friendly buildings and housing developments—going against the grain of concrete and steel buildings that have to be heated and cooled.
The orange kanthari describes the social entrepreneurs who use business as a tool for sustainable social change. In our view, the goal is not to make a profit, but to use business methods to create structures that benefit those who are usually left out. We don’t believe, for example, that it’s enough to give microloans to women—even though microloans do empower women to provide for themselves and their families. That’s great, but the kanthari will focus much more on a mindset shift. Once harmful beliefs and conventions are transformed, social change is really sustainable.
For example, one of our graduates from Africa explained that her mother had advised her she could only prevent domestic violence by getting a good education and later a well-paying job. She followed her advice, received a good education and enrolled in a profitable job. And then, one day she asked her husband to hold their baby girl, who was only twenty-eight days old. Her husband got so upset, he beat her up, nearly killing her. She says, “Education and wealth will never prevent abuse. Only a new attitude, a mindset shift can create social change.”
So a kanthari is someone working for the deeper change that confronts the attitudes that oppress women—and wealthy women can be oppressed by these attitudes, too. We see business as a tool—a strategy—for social change, just as advocacy, or technology, can be a tool for social change.
The purple kanthari we dedicate to the artists—the creative ones who use their music, their dance, their writing, their theater, their paintings, their films, to create social change. All kanthari are social visionaries—social visionaries from the margins of society.
The MOON: You also say that kantharis have experienced a “pinching point.” What is “the pinching point”?
Tenberken: The pinching point is that painful life experience that motivates a marginalized person to fight back; to become a change agent. Gandhi’s “pinching point,” for example, came when he was thrown out of a first-class rail car, despite his first-class ticket, because his skin was brown. My pinching point was becoming blind and realizing that blindness wasn’t as big a disability as people’s attitudes towards me.
The MOON: Can those of us who want to create a better world, but are outsiders to the situation we’re addressing, be kantharis? Can we have a pinching point? Did your partner Paul have one?
Tenberken: Yes, Paul had a pinching point. His came when he was eleven years old and discovered red spots on his back. The doctor prescribed a medicine that gave him such a severe allergic reaction that all the skin on his back fell off—and stayed off for six years. His back was so bloody that every night when he went to bed the sheets would stick to it and he had to rip himself free every morning. When he was seventeen an uncle who’d had a large wound in the second World War suggested he put potato starch on his back and that not only prevented the sheets from sticking, but within a few months a thin layer of skin had grown across his back.
For a long time he was not accepted among his peers, however. His first girlfriend screamed and ran away the first time she saw his back. His peers would slap him on the back, sending him into excruciating pain. They thought it was funny. As a result, he had very low self-esteem. He didn’t believe he was good enough to do anything, but he liked mechanical engineering so he focused on that as a teenager. As a result of his focus, he was sent from Holland to the United States at nineteen as a consultant to fix a problem with commercial car-washing equipment. That gave him a lot of confidence—and in the States he visited a doctor who got him properly diagnosed so that his back finally healed. Nevertheless, those six years as an outsider gave him valuable motivation for helping others who are marginalized.
I have no college degree, by the way; Paul has four. We’re like software and hardware. Paul is the one who designs all the buildings on our campuses. Following the example of Laurie Baker, our buildings incorporate many environmental innovations and are naturally heated and cooled. Our kanthari campus, for example, has been named the second-greenest building in all of India.
The MOON: The theme of this issue is “Impossible is nothing.” You are an embodiment of this theme, yet our world is facing a lot of challenges that seem fairly daunting, if not impossible. What is your take on the state of the world and our hopes for the future?
Tenberken: I think human beings are always able to find a solution. We might face a lot of setbacks, but those should motivate us to dream bigger. Maybe that’s why we’re facing so many challenges today: our dreams have been too small. Maybe too many of us are waiting for “the experts”—the insiders—to solve our problems instead of tackling them ourselves. For example, why don’t we challenge students to come up with energy solutions? Why don’t we harness the energy we expend walking around and convert it to some additional use?
Human beings so often get used to our situation and if it ceases to work, we become paralyzed. No one wants to leave their comfort zone. When I became blind I had to learn new ways of doing just about everything. It wasn’t comfortable, but I had no choice. It seems that humanity is facing a similar situation. Maybe the entire world is reaching its pinching point.
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