Electric Wind
The idea: sent home from school by a famine, a fourteen-year-old built a windmill from scrap and a library book.
Read it
Who is in this book
- Tara a child of the Green Listens longest, speaks last
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts of this story are on record, which are legend — and what does nobody know?
Record
- William Kamkwamba, born on 5 August 1987 in Malawi, left secondary school during the 2001-2002 famine because his family could not pay the fees. Source
- Working from library books, he built a windmill from scrap, including a bicycle dynamo and blue gum poles, that lit his family's house. Source
- He spoke at TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania. He was nineteen. Source
- His memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, written with Bryan Mealer, was published in 2009; the film of it came out in 2019. Source
Legend
- That he built the windmill entirely alone. He wrote that his cousin Geoffrey and his friend Gilbert helped him carry, cut and climb. Source
Nobody knows
- The day the first bulb lit. The memoir places it in 2002, when he was fourteen or fifteen; no date was written down. Source
Tara’s sentence
The case stops where Tara speaks. Write the sentence you would have said. It stays on this device.
Kept.
Your sentence lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Ring the hammer for someone
Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.