I love Make magazine because it has great stories about people who build things themselves. When my story first came out in America, they were nice enough to send a lot of their issues to me in Malawi. Today, Mark, the editor, posted about our book.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind — fantastic new book about a how a Malawian teenager harnessed the power of the wind
William Kamkwamba's parents couldn't afford the $80
yearly tuition for their son's school. The boy sneaked into the classroom
anyway, dodging administrators for a few weeks until they caught him. Still
emaciated from the recent deadly famine that had killed friends and neighbors,
he went back to work on his family's corn and tobacco farm in rural Malawi,
Africa.
With no hope of getting the funds to go back to school,
William continued his education by teaching himself, borrowing books from the
small library at the elementary school in his village. One day, when William
was 14, he went to the library searching for an English-Chichewa dictionary to
find out what the English word "grapes" meant, and came across a
fifth-grade science book called Using Energy. Describing this moment in
his autobiography, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (co-written with
Bryan Mealer), William wrote, "The book has since changed my life." Read the rest of the post. Thank you Mark!
