Book Review: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

Living without electricity would be a struggle to most. Not having your phone fully charged will have today’s teenager in a tantrum. In places around the world, they need electricity just for things that we take for granite, like light. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a book of William Kamkwamba’s life in present day Wimbe, Malawi, Africa. At the age of fourteen he battled through outrages poverty, hunger, lack of public education and an insufficient amount of motivation from others to build a windmill from scratch that generates electricity for his village. A dream of which not much Malawis (people that live in Malawi) consider. “Only two percent of Malawis have the convenience of having electricity flow within or near their home” (pg 81).

As a result, the chief of Wimbe begged for aid from President Muluzi and received it. Soon every farmer received a bag of NPK fertilizer to make up for the loss, but even that did not make up for the tragedy. Before Wiliams grandpa past away he said to him that “the country was once covered in forest with so many trees that the trial grew dark at noon” (pg 82). William was smart enough to realize the result of deforestation. “Cutting down trees is one of the things that keep us Malawians poor. Without trees observing the water rains turn to floods and wash away the soil and its minerals” (pg82). When famine struck Malawi in 2001 droughts destroyed the crops in their family’s farm. The government remained silent. The village was not receiving aid. A burst of chaos corrupted the streets which turned into riots. People were desperate for money to purchase food. “A man in the trading center was caught trying to sell his two young daughters for money to eat” (pg113); this scene will not leave Willam’s mind. Death spiked the village, thousands of people were dying of hunger, including children. The price of maize reached nearly a thousand kwacha. Family members turned on each other. Fathers were walking out on their families. He talks about his sister Doris striking his other sister Rose in the face for obtaining to much gaga. Gaga is a cheap food that was often feed to animals. One day his father said, “one of the mysterious, yet wonderful things about hunger is it only kills men” (pg152). He took this into consideration and thought about it. William says, “Men were the ones going out foraging, and in turn, burning precious energy” (pg.152). The famine got so bad that William was forced to kill his own dog, Khamba, with his bare hands. His does was his “greatest friend” (pg 147). Khamba had always been by Williams’s side since he was a little boy. William would rather take his dog’s life away himself