Anton Crone goes to Malawi in search of “the boy who harnessed the wind’ and
learns Kamkwamba’s greatest lesson.
In 2012 I went to find one of my heroes. He comes from a small village in Malawi
called Kasungu. You might have heard of him: William Kamkwamba, “the boy
who harnessed the wind.’
His story took flight on a TED Talk in June 2007. I watched on my computer
screen, a nervous Kamkwamba ascending the stage where a presenter coaxed
this story from him: how, as a 14-year-old, he had made a windmill to generate
electricity for his home. He learned it from a library book and made the windmill
from old bicycle parts, plastic pipes and wood. He even improved the power
output by applying four blades instead of three. Where there was no electricity
before, the windmill lit his home and powered two radios.
His humble story and halting speech had people standing in their seats, this at
TED for which luminaries prepare their speech for months. Kamkwamba could
hardly speak English and he had nailed it. His story became a worldwide
sensation. He also became my hero.
A filmmaker friend, Brett Wild, and I were travelling East Africa to document
stories like Kamkwamba’s. We wanted to find him but didn’t know how so we
reached out on the web and eventually connected with a mentor of his. But we
were denied any access to Kamkwamba because he was under contract to a
production company filming a documentary about him.
It was sad, but what upset us most that they behaved as if they had some
ownership over Kamkwamba. To Wild and I, his story was something to be
shared, like it had been worldwide on the screens of TED and YouTube. So we
decided to go and film him anyway.
We had visions of arriving in Kasungu to find a humble Kamkwamba only too
happy to be interviewed. He would show us around his village and demonstrate
his wonderful invention. We would laugh, we would be awed. We would capture
it all and give the other production company a rev.
But by the time we got to Malawi we had broken down three times – we were
driving a smart car after all. The idea was to prove you didn’t need a gas
guzzling 4×4 to travel Africa but the car had failed on every dirt road we
ventured down, and Kasungu could only be reached by dirt. We were also way
behind schedule so we stuck to the tar and crept on.
But I wasn’t done. I had to meet him. So on another Malawi trip I made a
pilgrimage to Kasungu. I arrived there like most people did: on the back of a 10-
ton truck that acted as a taxi. I walked through the quiet village and asked the
first person I saw for Kamkwamba. “I am his cousin,’ said the young boy, and
he lead me past a football pitch where we gathered an entourage, and there on
a hill, I saw four windmills.
We reached Kamkwamba’s compound where his mother greeted me. I
recognised her from a photo Kamkwamba had shown in his TED speech. She
looked younger than I thought. His brother and a couple of younger cousins
came by but there was no William. It turned out he was studying in the US
thanks to the help of his sponsors. I was disappointed, but I had been prepared
that he might not be there, and spending time there with his family was
inspiration enough.
His eldest cousin, who taught at a local school, showed me William’s great
experiments some which lay in a pile, others which were merrily turning in the
wind. His cousin finally showed me Kamkwamba’s room where an alternator
buzzed in the corner.
My curiosity satisfied I realised by then that I might come across as something of
a stalker, so I made to leave. “But stay the night,’ said his cousin. So I did. They
gave me William’s room where the light shone brightly and I could recharge my
laptop. After a meal of nshima and beef, I flipped the laptop lid and showed the
kids, at the house, images of people I had photographed in Mali and Benin. They
ooe’d and aah’d. I showed them photos of kids I had taken in schools right
there in Malawi, and they smiled in the glow of the screen. I said to his cousin it
was a pity that William had to travel overseas to learn more. He agreed, but
then he said: “Perhaps William is teaching them something about Africa.’ That
night I read my book by the light that Kamkwamba provided.
The next morning I stopped by the village cinema while I waited for the taxi
truck. At 10:00 there were more than 30 boys in this dark room watching a
KungFu video dubbed into Chichwa. I wondered what good electricity had
brought them, and I wished instead that they could watch Kamkwamba on that
screen to learn his greatest lesson: that we can learn so much from books.
