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THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND
Since my all-too-brief visit to Africa, I’ve been reading accounts of life on that fascinating continent from a variety of sources and countries. Some were accounts written by colonials, some by genocide survivors, and some, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s NO FUTURE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS, were accounts of the process of healing. THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND is an absorbing account of how one teenage boy in Malawi – a high school drop-out (his family couldn’t afford the fees) – taught himself enough science out of library books to build a primitive-looking windmill to supply his family’s small house with electric light.
You can probably imagine, it wasn’t an easy task. Once he got the idea that he could harness the power of the wind that his village had in abundance, William Kamkwamba had to scavenge and re-use other people’s scraps and discards – everything from beer caps to bicycle wheels – to cobble together his first windmill. The small amount of power it produced at first lit only small bulbs recycled from abandoned automobiles, but its effect was magical. Trial and error brought sturdier, more powerful structures, and the family finally didn’t have to choose between choking on kerosene fumes or going to bed when the sun went down. Along the way, William and his family had to deal with devastating famine when the crops failed, a corrupt central government, disease and death. His greatest dream was to go to school, but the family had no money to pay for secondary education.
The story is an inspiration in itself, but it also brings up the point that perhaps we are wrong to think that the way to help Africa solve her problems is by massive financial aid that all too often gets siphoned off by government agents and never reaches the people it was meant to help. The large, sexy projects Western engineers favor are not as useful to people in the villages as the smaller, more homely ones. Windmills for making electricity – compound by compound – or pumping water out of wells, and mosquito nets for every bed, go a long way to making a difference in people’s lives, and they have an immediate effect.
The story is worth reading, told in William’s own words with help from a western journalist with a deep love of Africa. I heartily recommend it.
[Discussion over on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/shei
You can probably imagine, it wasn’t an easy task. Once he got the idea that he could harness the power of the wind that his village had in abundance, William Kamkwamba had to scavenge and re-use other people’s scraps and discards – everything from beer caps to bicycle wheels – to cobble together his first windmill. The small amount of power it produced at first lit only small bulbs recycled from abandoned automobiles, but its effect was magical. Trial and error brought sturdier, more powerful structures, and the family finally didn’t have to choose between choking on kerosene fumes or going to bed when the sun went down. Along the way, William and his family had to deal with devastating famine when the crops failed, a corrupt central government, disease and death. His greatest dream was to go to school, but the family had no money to pay for secondary education.
The story is an inspiration in itself, but it also brings up the point that perhaps we are wrong to think that the way to help Africa solve her problems is by massive financial aid that all too often gets siphoned off by government agents and never reaches the people it was meant to help. The large, sexy projects Western engineers favor are not as useful to people in the villages as the smaller, more homely ones. Windmills for making electricity – compound by compound – or pumping water out of wells, and mosquito nets for every bed, go a long way to making a difference in people’s lives, and they have an immediate effect.
The story is worth reading, told in William’s own words with help from a western journalist with a deep love of Africa. I heartily recommend it.
[Discussion over on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/shei