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William Kamkwamba lives in a small farming village in Malawi, a country in the south east part of Africa. People in his village called him “misala,” which means crazy, but after reading his story you can see that he is anything but crazy. “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer is a true story of inspiration, perseverance and faith.
William was raised in a poor farming village where they mainly grew corn and tobacco. As children, William and his friends loved any kind of trucks, as many children do. But instead of being able to go to a store and buy one, they had to be creative and find things to make them with, like wire and empty booze cartons. William points out in his book that no matter what part of the country a child lives in they have the same basic needs and wants and that people are not so different. William and his friends were very proud of the trucks they made.
Ever since William heard sound coming from a radio he was instantly curious about how they worked. By age 13, he and a friend would start taking apart broken radios to try to figure them out. Williams’s interest in electronics escalated from there. He was hugely interested in science and knew he wanted to be a scientist, which he considered worlds better than farming. He knew the hard work of farming and that the only way of survival was if you had a good crop that year.
In 2002, William’s country was stricken by a horrible famine. With no help from their government and no money coming in from their crops, people were dying every day. Everywhere you looked there was devastation. William and his family eventually were down to one meal a day, if you could call it a meal, but they never gave up hope or their faith in God.
Because of the famine William’s parents couldn’t afford to pay the fee for him to attend school. This devastated William, but he never complained. William’s savior at that time was a small library in a school that was stocked with books donated by the American government. The book that changed his life and started him on his path to great things was found in that library. It was an American textbook called “Using Energy.”
The cover of this book had a long row of windmills. At that time William had no idea what a windmill was or that it would be a windmill and the wind, the one constant that God provided them in Malawi, that would come to change his life.
I loved this book. Although it was hard to read about the horribly difficult times the people of Malawi went through, you can also see how one boy, with the help and support of his friends and family, can make a difference because of his strong desire to learn and to make things better for his village.
This book and many others are available through all five of the La Crosse County Library System branches in Bangor, Campbell, Holmen, Onalaska and West Salem. You may access our catalog through
www.lacrossecountylibrary.org and place requests on any item in the catalog.
Shelly Parshall is a La Crosse County Library System staff member at the Bangor branch.
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