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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope (P.S.) Review

This is the story of William Kamkwamba, a clever boy in Malawi, Africa who built his own windmill from found materials at age 14. Much of the energy of the book is that it is a very recent story, the main events taking place just in the last six years.
The story is in three parts. The first part tells of Willam's life growing up and that of his father, giving a fascinating glimpse of the village life of subsistence farmers whose culture has changed little in thousands of years. Daily existence includes very real fears of witchcraft, shamans for healing, and strong currents of superstition. Although written in clear, simple narrative (mostly by the co-author, Bryan Mealer, an AP reporter with extensive experience across Africa), it is by no means a child's bedtime story. Malawi, an interior country of 13 million, has minimal health care, primitive agriculture, and no free public high schools. Villagers can be killed by wild animals in the forest. In 2001 the maize crops failed, plunging the countryside into famine and near social collapse, and William loses friends to disease and starvation. The government comes off badly in this episode, incompetent, brutal against the local village chief who complains, and corrupt.
William is a bright boy eager for school, but his family cannot afford the fees. He is forced to drop out. In the second part of the story, doing the best he can in spite of this disappointment, William finds an elementary physics textbook in a local library and sees diagrams of windmills - he cannot even read the English text. From this bit of information, with impressive focus and persistence he manages to build his own version from scraps of wire, an old bicycle hub, and flattened PVC pipe for blades. He has zero resources - not even a soldering iron, which would be useless in any case since there is no electricity in his household. But he is a natural engineer, and even with no guidance or help, he succeeds in making an operating windmill which powers a few lightbulbs for home and village, charges cell phones, operates a water pump - all of which make a real difference in village life.
The third part of the book, just as remarkable as his technological triumph, is about William's discovery by the outside world. The hero of the discovery phase is really the Internet. William's windmill comes to the attention of an engineer working in the capital city, who blogs about it, inspiring others to take a four hour bus journey to find William, who then quickly comes to the attention of international entrepreneurs and technologists. His life quickly expands - amazingly, straight from his village he is invited to speak at an African conference organized by TED, the California organization which publicizes emerging ideas about technology and design. Taken under wing by US sponsors, he travels internationally and finds scholarships for his own education as well as funding for his village technology. He now has a website of course (just Google his name), a PayPal donation account, and a promotional video here on Amazon - more international attention within a short time than the coolest MIT Media Lab guru!
There are a few technical errors in the text - malaria is not a virus for example, and the core of a transformer is a ferromagnet, not a conductor. These are minor points; William is an appealing character and the story is inspiring. But there must be millions of Williams across the developing world. What the book really shows is that the best international assistance is in response to local energy rather than top-down through an ineffective government. The tools to find those kids and offer that help are now at hand. Whereas electric windmills are not new - everything William did has been known for a hundred years - instant cheap global communication is a revolutionary innovation which can help bring the best minds of Africa and many other places into the world community.

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