The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

“I tried, and I did it.” - William Kamkwamba. William grew up in Malawi, Africa, and was born in 1987. He grew up with two sisters and at one point had a dog named Khamba. William is a 29 year old man now, but when he built his first windmill to produce electricity and irrigation for crops, he was fourteen. The book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is written by Bryan Mealer and William Kamkwamba which is a memoir is about one of the two authors, William. William Kamkwamba deals with a famine, educational problems, and social difficulties, but he overcomes these barriers and makes his own path. The first problem that William had to overcome was starvation. In Malawi, there was a famine (shortage of food and water). What his family did after they ran out of food was they sold all of their personal items such as tables, plates, utensils, chairs, etc. They used the money from that to buy more food for …show more content…
Dropping out was a problem for him, but he found many ways to learn and make his life full of lessons without school. One activity he did to help his brain was going to the library and finding books to use to learn. The one book he found that fascinated him was Using Energy by Mary Atwater. This is important because this book is what led him to making the windmill that changed his whole life.Another difficulty he had that surprised him was his grades and secondary school. William said he was stoked to finally see where he got in for school, but he got into the worst, lowest quality, and poorest school in his area. Because his grades were very low, and not high enough to get into any good schools. Kachokolo is a school without desks, chairs, whiteboards, a science lab, etc. The schools he wanted to go to had all of those things and were almost like college they are so nice. He managed to get through the first semester, but he couldn’t pay the second so he had to drop