Posted on 10/08/2009 6:32:14 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource that was freely available to him.
His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands. His family and others were surviving on one meal a day. The red soil in his Masitala hometown was parched, leaving his father, a farmer, without any income.
But amid all the shortages, one thing was still abundant.
Wind.
"I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try, too.'"
Kamkwamba was kicked out of school when he couldn't pay $80 in school fees, and he spent his days at the library, where a book with photographs of windmills caught his eye.
"I thought, this thing exists in this book, it means someone else managed to build this machine," he said.
Armed with the book, the then-14-year-old taught himself to build windmills. He scoured through junkyards for items, including bicycle parts, plastic pipes, tractor fans and car batteries. For the tower, he collected wood from blue-gum trees.
"Everyone laughed at me when I told them I was building a windmill. They thought I was crazy," he said. "Then I started telling them I was just playing with the parts. That sounded more normal."
That was 2002. Now, he has five windmills, the tallest at 37 feet. He built one at an area school that he used to teach classes on windmill-building.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Great story.
If they go down far enough I wonder if the windmills could be used to pump water?
I hate wind. Break it whenever I can.
The only real advancement there is.
Of cours they laughed at you. Soon they will hate you. Their called leftists. They hate real progress.
Read the whole story, please. They are using it to power pumps.
We could do the same: just replace the teleprompters with wind-turbines! ;)
Don't let the socialists get a hold of them, if they do, all that seizing opportunities and technology, and finding solutions to their own problems will be forced to come to a screeching halt!
I agree, great story. It just amazes what can be achieved with a can do attitude.
This young is being co-opted by the eco-wcko’s. He didn’t build a windmill because it was green. He built a windmill because the leftist mentality had left his village without electricity and progress.
I did read the whole story, I thought. Will look again. Thanks.
What strikes me most about this is that if this kid can do this with nothing, why the hell can’t the kids in inner cities do this with all the education and programs the libs feed them? I already know the answer...the libs don’t want them to succeed that would mean they are self sufficient and their parents don’t give a damn. Maybe if parents were charged court costs from their welfare checks things would change.
The UN is gonna go in there and tax those things.
Motivation is a strange and mystical creature. It’s amazing how it can appear in the least likely of places, such as this. On the other hand, it’s too bad we don’t do more to encourage it here.
They have no interest and no desire.
I have heard jokes of hunger and desperation being the greatest motivators of motion and invention.
Villagers would surround him to snicker and point... Ignoring them, he would quietly bolt pieces using a screwdriver made of a heated nail attached to a corncob. The heat -- from both the crowd and the melted, flattened pipes he used as blades -- did not deter him.
Three months later, his first windmill churned to life as relief swept over him....
"I wanted to finish it just to prove them wrong," he said.
Hunger and desparation...truer words have never been spoken.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.