Nature used to help others

Youth's dreams lead to change

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer; William Morrow; 273 pages; $25.99.

This book is the unforgettable and inspiring autobiography of a young, impoverished, undernourished young Milawian who followed and reached his dream.

William Kamkwamba, whose goal was to grow up and study science at one of Malawi’s boarding schools, gives the reader a glimpse of life in villages across southeast Africa. The book begins with accounts of his grandfather’s stories of hunting leopards and wildebeests with his homemade bow and arrows, the traditions and rituals that accompanied the hunts and tales of witchcraft and magic spells.

Kamkwamba’s father’s generation was mostly subsistance farmers who depended on their small corn plots for survival. Kamkwamba describes at length farming methods in which the whole family works clearing the plot, digging new rows with hoes and then planting. One of Kamkwamba’s chores was stacking the last season’s dry corn stalks to burn them.

“Grasshoppers make their homes in these stacks,” he writes, “and once the stalks start burning, the grasshoppers fly out by the hundreds and are easy to catch. I’d throw them in sugar bags, then take them home to roast over the fire with salt. I’m telling you, I can eat huge amounts of nsima with crunchy grasshoppers.”

As it happened, Kamkwamba would progress through adversity toward his desire to be a scientist. The year 2000 was a disastrous one for Malawian farmers. First came great floods that carried away flocks, crops, and fertilizer, followed by a drought. Kamkwamba’s father could not pay his son’s tuition, so the boy had to drop out of school. Famine and near starvation were all around. Kamkwamba describes constant hunger pangs and the loss of weight of all those in the villages.

To forget his pain, the youngster concentrated on pursuing his love of electricity. Now out of school, he had time to study the limited supply of books at a nearby library and to listen carefully to his cousin Gilbert, who passed on his class notes. In the library one day, Kamkwamba and Gilbert were left to their own devices when the librarian gave them the freedom of the stacks. Browsing, Kamkwamba discovered the U.S. textbook “Using Energy.” It was about windmills, which he’d never seen, and it changed his life.

When he saw the book’s photos, notions he had been tinkering with fell into place. Wind was the answer. Much of the book describes the scrounging, salvaging, and retooling that went into building a windmill. Devising a pulley system that used part of a salvaged bicycle chain and gears, a tractor fan and blades made of straightened and split PVC pipe, everything came to fruition.

The windmill he built meant there would be water to irrigate the family’s field, the village would have light and water eventually would be pumped into the Kamkwambas’ house so that the women of the village could get water from a tap instead of working a pump handle.

Word got out about his windmill, and he soon captured the admiration of journalists and educators and was featured in the media. He was invited to give a presentation at an international conference, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago used his original circuit breaker and light switch as a highlight of the exhibit “Fast Forward: Inventing the Future.”

Kamkwaba ends his book thus: “I hope this story finds its way to our brothers and sisters out there who are trying to elevate themselves and their communities, but who may feel discouraged by their poor situation. I want them to know they’e not alone. By working together, we can help remove this burden of bad luck from their backs, just as I did, and use it to build a better future.”

Kamkwamba is now a scholarship student at the prestigious African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Bryan Mealer covered the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and wrote a book about his experiences. He is a former staff writer for The Associated Press, and he writes for Harper’s, Esquire and other magazines.

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