The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
A cholera outbreak reaches Wimbe from southern Malawi. Every day people are from hunger or cholera, also Geoffrey’s anemia has worsened. A week later, Mayless contracts malaria and is unable to eat. She can’t go to the clinic because the building is quarantined with cholera. She recovered but is extremely thin.
In march the dowe is ready to be eaten, the village begins to reawaken.
William decides to go to the library at the Wimbe primary school.
One sunday finds a science textbook that explains how hydro plants, such as the one on the Shire River in southern Malawi, use water to produce electricity. He finds other books about physics and reads it instead of continuing his independent school study.
William begins to dream of all the things a windmill could do for him and his family, so he starts collecting materials to create a small prototype. and it works. Working from the same model of his prototype, William plans to make a full size windmill.
Willian returns to school, but as he cannot continue paying, he is forced to leave it. In his free time he works on the Windmill, he finds the last piece he needs to complete his project.
The next morning, William begins building a temporary tower to see if his windmill will actually work, and after some fixes his invention worked. The invention became famous and from there, it is only a small step to the huge money-saving inventions that will shield William’s family from hunger.
As the windmill only works with the wind, William looks for a battery to turn on the light when there is no wind. With the battery working, William can light his whole house using parallel circuits after he finds lightbulbs that can run using DC power.
After several problems that Willian managed to solve, he can leave his windmill to do its job without his constant work troubleshooting the various jury-rigged pieces.
As there is still no money to send William to classes, he decides to go back to the library to see if another invention like the previous one occurs to him. Rewiring the radio and attaching a microphone, William and Geoffrey find out that William can broadcast his voice over the radio frequency up to 300 feet.
In March of 2006, a strong wind appeared, and people in the village blamed William’s windmill for calling witches and causing the drought.
William joins a club started by health personnel from Wimbe clinic to help people learn the truth about HIV prevention and AIDS treatment.
William’s success with the windmill and the HIV club earns him the attention of a teacher at Wimbe primary, who asks him to start a science club for the younger children.
In November, The Malawi Teacher Training Activity came to inspect the library at Wimbe Primary School and notice William’s windmill. As a result of this many journalists are interested in William. Dr. Mchazime does what he can to get William a scholarship to a good Malawian boarding school. He enters Madisi Secondary.
In January, William heard that he has been chosen as a TEDGlobal 2007 fellow and will present his windmill project to other scientists and inventors in Arusha, Tanzania, where he gets the first place.
He is finally accepted to the African Bible College Christian Academy to continue his secondary education in Lilongwe. From the money of his donors to improve his village in many practical ways and give his family better medical care.
IN 2008, he traveled to Cape Town, South Africa and spoke about technology in emerging countries at the World Economic Forum on Africa.
At the African Leadership Academy, William is surrounded by colleagues who share stories similar to him. William together with his companions dream for a future for Africa that erases all the bad luck of the past and looks toward a better tomorrow.
By María Camila Pinzón, Step 11
