This article was taken from the April issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
At just 14, William Kamkwamba used scrap metal from the local dump and know-how gleaned from old books to make windmills. Doing so, he changed his own life and transformed the fortunes of his family -- and indeed his whole community
Modern life seems plagued by "yes, but". The automatic excuse."We need to fix this, can you help?" "Yes, but..." It's a limiting, insidious trait -- letting circumstances happen rather than meeting them head-on. Yet some people just get on and do it.
The challenges they face just prompt greater ingenuity, more inventive solutions.
William Kamkwamba is one such person. Growingu p on a farm in Malawi, he had much the same childhood as anyone else in rural Africa, getting into scrapes, making up games and so on. When they weren't doing chores or at school, he and his cousin Geoffrey would take apart old broken radios to see how they worked. In lieu of a soldering iron, they fused components together using wire heated over the kitchen fire. They went through bins to find old batteries, connecting several together to squeeze out the last dregs of power. William's curiosity was insatiable, yet for the bigger questions -- what drives a car engine, how does a CD hold music - there wasn't anyone to help. Science captured his imagination. He studied hard and won a place in secondary school.
And then famine struck.
The 2002 famine was a terrible time for Malawi. Stocks dwindling, the Kamkwamba family was soon down to one meal a day.
William calculated it as just seven mouthfuls of food per person.
Then, after even government handouts dried up, just three.
Eventually the crisis passed. But as the community dragged itself back to normal and school started again, William had to drop out of education. It was just too expensive.
He did, however, discover the local library. "I stuck with the curriculum to keep up with my friends," he says. "Then after a week or so, I started to pick up science books." One book in particular caught his eye: Using Energy. "It changed my life." It wasn't easygoing - it was in English and he had to look up a lot of words, but the answers it contained were priceless.
Most inspiring of all was the section on windmills. Here was a way to pump water and generate power. That meant two harvests a year instead of one, a year-round kitchen garden, and electric lights so he could read instead of going to bed when it got dark. "A windmill was more than power. It was freedom." Even with the right tools, most people would have been confounded by the task William set himself - to build a windmill. To make his small prototype he used bicycle spokes as improvised pliers, flattening the head of one to make a screwdriver; dissected a cassette player for its motor, cut up an old discarded shoe for its rubber.
This first, miniature version took days, but just gathering the materials for a full-sized windmill took three months. He scoured the local dump for parts, and while his scavenging paid off in the sense that the parts for his windmill were coming together, the extra cost was that he and his family were teased about "the crazy boy in the scrapyard" who was always hauling around bits of metal.
William did odd jobs, saving money to pay to have key parts welded together. In the end the final piece, a 12V dynamo, was bought for him off a passing cyclist by his best friend Gilbert for 200 kwacha -- about 30p, or a day's wages.
Gilbert and Geoffrey, Sancho Panzas to William's Don Quixote, helped him build a tower, and together they hauled the windmill to the top using Mrs Kamkwamba's washing line in place of a rope and pulley. People started arriving. They had seen a sudden addition to the skyline from the market and wanted to know what it was. There's no word in Chichewa for windmill, so William called it magetsi a mphepho -- electric wind. He removed the brakes, the blades began to spin, slowly at first and then as they moved faster, the light bulb he had attached flickered before bursting into light. William was elated. The crowd astonished. All the hard work, putting up with name calling, missing out on school, it was all worth it.
The next months were a blur. When he wasn't working in the fields, William was tinkering or flipping through the pages of Understanding Physics as his precious bulb flickered. "I was always tweaking it to make improvements. I can tell you it is tricky to stop the windmill spinning when the wind is blowing!" He added a handmade circuit breaker, even rigged it so he could charge mobile phones. It was only a matter of time before the local press found out about this crazy boy who had harnessed the wind.
Their pieces led to a blog post on Hactivate, which in turn caught the eye of Emeka Okafor, programme director of TEDGlobal 2007. Before he knew it, William was back in school and had an invitation to TED. It changed his life. He hadn't even seen the internet before, let alone dreamt of travelling by aeroplane or staying in a hotel. Yet here he was, looking at a map of Malawi on Google Earth, playing with an iPod and - most precious of all - listening to other Africans share their ideas.
Since then, he hasn't stopped. The electric windmill was followed by a deep-bore well with two big water pumps which, he says, are great, "especially for the vegetable garden". He is now studying in Johannesburg, and is fascinated by every opportunity he gets to learn and meet people from different cultures. He explains that the benefits are simple: "the big change I can say for me is that I can go back to school, and people in my community and village have access to clean, safe water." You can't put a price on that.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
