Title: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and HopeAuthors: William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
In The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, William Kamkwamba talks about growing up in Malawi, where everyone, young and old, goes to bed at 7pm. Why? Because that's when the sun sets, and 98% (that figure may be wrong) of rural Malawians live without electricity. William grew up as the son of a farmer, and when a famine struck the land, his parents could no longer pay his school fees and he had to drop out after one year of secondary school. Armed with not much more than an old high school physics textbook and access to the town junk heap, William had a dream of bringing electricity to his house, and spent months creating a windmill that would harness electricity to light up his home.
While William's story of his childhood in Malawi and the construction of the windmill are interesting, the sensation he created (which is described in the last few chapters of the book) is equally interesting. After a few local journalists reported on the windmill, he was nominated to attend a TED conference in Tanzania, which led to a scholarship to a pan-African high school, a better windmill for his parents (to draw water from a well), several trips to America, ,where he was feted by rich Americans, and, presumably, this book. By the end of the book, it felt a little bit like the sensation of a boy who built a windmill was more the story than the boy who actually built the windmill, if he was even the same boy anymore.
2 comments:
okay, first i just want to say that even when i don't comment on a post, i will always be a fan in your cheering section.
next, i need to understand how, on only the 9th day of the year, you have managed to do the following:
house guests
date nights
house cleaning
running like the boogie man's chasing you for mile upon mile
and READ 4 ENTIRE BOOKS (to say nothing of all the writing)
all while raising four delicious children and i didn't even mention the cooking/baking that i know goes on over there.
i seriously don't know how this all happens in your life! i've been home sick in bed ignoring all my life's obligations and "shoulds" and doing nothing but reading, and have still only managed to read your gurnsey literary, memory keepers, and year my son & i were born. and i pulled two nearly-all-nighters on two of those.
do you totally speed read? i want to be you. really, i really do. ♥
uh, yeah, being sick is a lot harder than reading.
The books are all pretty short, if it makes you feel any better :P
I also (I feel guilty admitting this) have a house cleaner. But I won't let myself sit around and read while she's here, because then I feel lazy and overly indulgent.
And yeah, those kids pretty much raise themselves...
What I should be doing, if I were truly a nice and thoughtful person, would be to bring some chicken soup to a sick friend.
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