William Kamkwamba was 14 years old when he was forced to quit school due to his family’s inability to pay the required $80 student fee in his small village in central Malawi.
Eager to continue his education any way he could, he spent a considerable amount of time at the library where, one day, he picked up a tattered U.S. textbook and saw a picture of a windmill.
Malawi is short on many resources, but they do have an abundant supply of wind. Thinking “If somebody did this thing, I can also do it,” Kamkwamba set out to build his very own windmill. To get supplies for it, he salvaged all sorts of junk (another man’s treasure) from his father’s broken bike to old tractor pieces and was often greeted with “Ah, look, the madman has come with his garbage.” Several people thought he was smoking marijuana to which he replied that he was “only making something for juju [magic].”
The garbage-collecting madman succeeded in making magic when he managed to hack together a functioning windmill from strips of PVC pipe, rusty car and bicycle parts and blue gum trees.
Originally, all he wanted to do was power a small light bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset. That dream got bigger in a hurry and one windmill has turned into three, which now generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use.
TEDGlobal heard about him, invited him to speak at their conference, and inspired by William, started a non-profit called the Moving Windmills Project. Moving Windmills supports Malawian-run rural economic development and education projects in Malawi, with the goals of community economic independence and self-sustainability; food, water and health security; and educational success.
All this from a tattered library book, a few old bicycle parts and a boy with a seemingly impossible dream. Juju indeed.
(William will be a guest on The Daily Show tonight!)
