“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
I knew I was going to like William Kamkwamba when I read what he had to say about his singing in the early pages of The Boy Harnessed the Wind: “My voice sounded like one of the guinea fowl that screeched in our trees as it pooped, but I never let that stop me.” No sooner do we figure out we can sing, than someone is telling us the right and wrong way to make a joyful noise. Personally, I think it is the measure of a person when they will sing regardless; that is a person who can achieve just about anything. William is just such a person, as you’ll learn when you read this moving book.
This is the story of a young man who, at the age of 14, figured out how to build a windmill to power his family’s home in Malawi using only a couple of science textbooks for his information. Don’t worry, there was no need for “spoiler alert” before I told you that, because the real story here is the journey William took in making his windmill a reality. (The book is co-authored by Bryan Mealer (All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo), but to his credit you never once feel that the story is being told by anyone other than William.)
We learn that William and his friends were creative from the games they played based on American movies, and the toys they would fashion from empty cardboard boxes. (As an American, it’s a little disturbing to find that people sometimes shape their idea of who we are from our movies. I mean, we all look like James Marsden, of course, but we don’t all go around blowing things up like Rambo.) We also learn that William is naturally curious about how things work. He doesn’t want to just listen to the radio; he wants to know how it operates. It’s not enough to know you put gas in a vehicle to make it run; he wants to know how the gas makes it run. These insights into William’s life reveal the seeds of a budding scientist.
Central to William’s journey is the inspiration for his inventions: hunger. As I read his account, I realized that hunger is actually an abstract concept for me. William takes us step-by-step through the onset of the famine that hits his country; we experience it through the eyes of a young man trying to comprehend what is happening to his world. How easily, really, a combination of uncooperative weather and a corrupt government led William’s family from a peaceful — if meager, by most standards — existence to abject poverty! Illness and death, fear and sorrow, unconscionable behavior and amazing forgiveness — the results of famine, all given a human face in his telling. At one point William describes — almost poetically — feeling painful hunger, and I suddenly felt embarrassed for ever having used the word “hungry” to describe myself. The simple reality I learn from William: I have never known hunger.
When he is forced to drop out of school due to lack of money, he discovers a small library stocked with books donated by Americans (how non-Rambo, yes?) and uses it to try to keep up with school. One of the books introduces him to windmills and he begins to imagine how he could apply this technology to his own life. In his country, only the very rich can afford electricity and even that comes with unwelcome blackouts. Could he use the windmill to supply his family with electricity? They rarely stay up past seven because there’s not much you can do in the dark except sleep. Could a windmill be used to pump water from the ground? If so, his family wouldn’t have to rely on rain or distant bodies of water to grow their crops — and they could even plant them twice a year. In other words, famine could become a thing of the past.
You might think you know the end of the story, but you don’t. Yes, William builds the windmill — and it works — but how his success changes his life and his community will put a smile in your heart. It’s an inspiring tale illustrating that hope is more than a politician’s snappy slogan; it is part of our fabric as humans and when we embrace it, we can achieve most anything. As William puts it, “If you want to make it, all you have to do is try.”
This is the reason I picked up The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind from the library:
