Electric Wind

William Kamkwamba lived in an impoverished area of Africa with no electricity or running water.  Born to uneducated parents he knew that education was his only hope for a better future for his family.  Following two bad years for farming William’s parents could no longer afford the fee Malawian students must pay to attend school.

Kicked out of school at 14 William’s future looked dim.  Everyone thought so…everyone except William.

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One of my basic tenets of life is, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  William Kamkwamba may have never heard that old saying, but he certainly lived it.

William lived in the little village of Masitala in the Kasungu district of Malawi.  His father raised corn and tobacco to earn a little money to feed the family.  In 2000 there was inadequate rainfall and crops were poor.  In 2002 the region was hit by flooding that left people short of food and with little seed for planting the following year.  The family suffered through until the next season.  After the year of too much water, they were then hit with another year of too little.  People ate anything they could get their hands on during the drought.  Livestock was butchered.  Even pets were killed and eaten. William couldn’t bring himself to kill and eat his beloved dog, Khamba, but continued to give him a portion of his own food, even as both grew skinnier and skinnier. The family was reduced to eating one small meal a day. The faithful Khamba quietly and patiently starved to death.

People began to die all around them. 

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William persisted in attending school, despite the fact that he sometimes had to walk past the bodies of people who had died of starvation or disease due to it.  What little food there was available was selling for incredibly inflated prices.

Despite all the suffering William continued his education…until he couldn’t.

In Malawi public education is not entirely free.  At that time families had to pay $80 per year per student to attend.  Once the Kamkwambas’ savings was all gone what little money they could scrape together had to go toward staying alive.  They sold anything they could, even stripping off the corrugated metal that covered their roof.

Suspended by the school William found a way to sneak into the classroom and avoid the teachers notice during roll-call.  The teacher had been seeing William’s sister so he turned a blind-eye to the boy’s presence until a member of the school’s faculty noticed.  William was sent home.

His public education was over, perhaps forever.

The boy had a hunger that rivaled even that of starvation.  He was hungry for knowledge.

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Since he could no longer attend school William started going to a local library which contained books donated by the McGraw-Hill International Book Donation Program, the International Book Bank, and the American Institute for Research.

One of the books he found was Using Energy.  On the cover of that book was a photo of a line of electricity generating windmills.

According to William, “I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water.  ‘I thought: That could be a defense against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself’.’”

Now, William was no ordinary boy.  He’d long had an interest in electronics.  He and his friends Gilbert and Geoffrey had even made a little money by repairing the battery-powered radios some people in their area owned.

As I said earlier, Malawi was poor and William’s area was even more impoverished than others.  Even poor people have garbage though, so the town did have a dump, which William often scrounged for wire, old batteries, electronic parts, etc.

He had decided to build a wind generator but before taking on a larger one he set forth to build a smaller prototype.  He searched the dump and managed to gather a radiator fan from a tractor, some car and bicycle parts, and a few pieces of old PVC pipe.  Part of his plan was to use one of those little 12 volt dynamos that some area residents used on their bicycles so that they could get around at night.  However he was unable to find or trade for one.  His friend, Gilbert, had a little money and bought a dynamo from someone for $1.50.

Gilbert was one of the few people who believed in William.  Many in the village thought the boy who dug around in the dump and talked about electricity from the wind must be crazy or under the influence of drugs. 

“So I told them I was only making something for juju magic. Then they said: ‘Ah, I see.’”

He put his idea together but quickly found that the old radiator fan didn’t catch the wind well enough to turn the little dynamo.  So he cut the old PVC pipe to appropriate lengths, held it over a fire, and smashed it flat.  These he attached to alternating vanes of the fan.  The new PVC vanes caught the wind very well. 

William mounted his contraption on a 16-foot tall tower he’d tied together of logs cut from dead blue gum trees.  As he climbed the tower with his creation townspeople gathered to watch.  Some even laughed.

William attached the wires from the generator to a light bulb he’d found at the dump, and the bulb lit up!  The laughter stopped.

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Before long William had scrounged more materials and built another generator to power lights and a radio for his family’s home. Out went the smoky kerosene lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber.

In many parts of Africa where the country is too poor to run power or telephone lines, the residents buy cell phones for communication.  The problem is charging them.  Even the neighbors who had laughed at William were eager to use his “electric wind” to charge their phones.

In their language, electric wind is “magetsi a mphepo”.

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A newspaper heard about William’s creation and published an article about him.  Word spread.  The youngster started receiving invitations for interviews and to give talks.  Before long he was travelling all around the world and was featured on television shows such as

Since William’s first windmill his fame has continued to grow.  He corroborated with reporter Bryan Mealer to write a book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which tells about his efforts to help his family and community.  A documentary, William and the Windmill, was made about him, which caught the attention of the powers-that-be at Netflix.  In 2019 that company produced a movie, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, about William and his efforts.

Donations of money and equipment helped the young man build more wind generators and even allowed him to make a solar-powered pump to give his town easy access to water. 

With all he’s done it seems William wouldn’t have time for anything else.  Not William.  With the help of fans who had heard of his achievements, he attended African Bible College Christian Academy in Lilongwe, then went on to receive a scholarship to the African Leadership Academy.  He also earned a scholarship to Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.  In 2014 he graduated with a degree in environmental studies.

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It would be easy to say that William’s success was attributable to his electric wind, but there’s a little more to it than that.  William is the living embodiment of my old adage, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  And it wouldn’t take a crystal ball to see that William is not finished.  Not by a long shot.

After all, what do you expect from the boy who harnessed the wind?

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