William Kamkwamba is a Malawian teenager. Unable to attend school as his family is unable to afford the $80 yearly tuition, he has taught himself by borrowing books and learning what he was interested in. He eventually came across a fifth-grade science book called Using Energy. In the book it described how to us wind energy to create electricity. Since only 2% of the households in his country have electricity, he was intrigued and set about building his own wind turbine. Electricity meant that people could read at night in their homes. A windmill that pumped water meant 2 hours a day savings hauling water for the familys crops.
So William set about digging in trash bins and junkyards for the parts he needed to build his own. Please remember that this is Africa and finding the necessary parts is not a simple task.
he collected things that most people would consider garbage—slime-clogged plastic pipes, a broken bicycle, a discarded tractor fan—and assembled them into a wind-powered dynamo. For a soldering iron, he used a stiff piece of wire heated in a fire. A bent bicycle spoke served as a size adapter for his wrenches
After months of work he hauled his apparatus to the top of a 16-foot tower made from blue gum tree branches. As the wind began to move the blades, Williams hard work started to become a reality. He went on to wire his house with four light bulbs and two radios, installing switches made from rubber sandals, and scratch-building a circuit breaker to keep the thatch roof of his house from catching fire.
William and his windmill remained a local hero only till the head of a teachers organization saw the windmill and recognized the monumental accomplishment. The media got a hold of the story and in the end Tom Rielly, TED’s partnership director befriended him and put funding behind him to irrigate and electrify his village and paid his tuition to attend further schooling.
William has since co-authored a book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind which is one of the few modern African story’s that has a happy ending.
It‘s quite in here! Why not leave a response?