The Bulgarian Bible in Braille: Ivan Tanev’s monument

In spite of his disabilities, Ivan Tanev, now 65, remains full of energy and optimism. And all through the years when he has battled with his difficulties, his faith has never wavered. His desire to read the Bible and to enable other blind people to do so too became a passion which has finally resulted in books of the Bulgarian Bible being made available in Braille for the first time.

Ivan was born in 1936 into an evangelical Christian family. His father was a preacher in the small village in Bulgaria where they lived. Ivan began his working life in a local job as a civil servant. A promising career beckoned the intelligent and well-educated young man, but because promotion up the ranks of the Communist Party would have meant giving up his Christian faith, it was a path he bravely refused.

During almost a year and a half in a succession of hospitals, he underwent multiple operations as doctors did what they could to heal at least some of the injuries. After all their efforts, however, all he was left with was the use of just one thumb and one eye with impaired vision. Then he left hospital and returned to his family in the village to start working out how to live the rest of his life with his handicaps.

More suffering was to come, however. In the years that followed, his remaining eye deteriorated and in 1962 he lost his eyesight completely. Ivan was just 26 years old.

Fortunately a friend arranged for a Braille alphabet to be sent to him, and in spite of his severe disadvantages Ivan taught himself to read Braille with his thumb, thus ushering some welcome light into his darkness.

Miracle

This in itself is little short of a miracle: of those who try to learn Braille after the years of childhood only a very small percentage succeed.

One day, in a Braille newspaper he found mention of a rehabilitation course for blind and visually-impaired people at a training centre in southern Bulgaria. He applied and was accepted, and in 1967 he exchanged the shelter of his family and the community of his village for Plovdiv, the second-largest city in Bulgaria, with a population approaching half a million people.

To his surprise he found that the director there was also a Christian. He supported Ivan, helping him to get accustomed to his bustling new surroundings and, when his training was complete, to find a job.

Enjoyed

Ever since he was a boy, Ivan had enjoyed reading the Bible and hearing it read. Now blind but having taught himself to read Braille, he wanted more than anything to read the Bible again, but there was none available in Bulgarian Braille.

Nor did there seem much prospect of one being produced: Bulgaria was a poor country, resources for the blind were scanty and such Braille presses as existed were not available to people who wanted to use them to produce Scriptures! Nevertheless, Ivan never lost hope that one day he would be able to read the Bible in Braille – and vowed, if necessary, to help bring it about himself.

In 1989 the communist regimes of eastern Europe began to fall and the following year Bulgaria elected its first non-communist president for 40 years.

Ivan’s Christian faith and the support of other Christians have helped him through the darkest times of his life, and he himself is grateful that his work can bring light into the life of others who are visually impaired.