If you don’t believe you can do it, read a marvelous little book called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a New York Times best-seller written by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, who came across the story while he was reporting in Africa covering the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
William was a very poor African farm boy born in Malawi, where Mary Tuchscherer, my colleague, teaches literacy and writing to young women. William had read about electricity and became passionate about the subject and passionate about what electricity could do to his very poor family. He then found some science books in a local library, used some scrap parts, and built a generator and a windmill from scratch. His neighbors called him misala, or crazy in the language of Malawi, but he did build his windmill and single-handedly was able to bring to his family both electricity and water using the power of the windmill.
His passion never stopped. In describing William’s accomplishment, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of MIT Media Lab and the founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child, said “William Kamkwamba is an alchemist who turned misfortune into opportunity, opportunity beyond his own. The book is about learning by inventing. William’s genius was to be ingenious.”
This coming November read in my book “We Got Mojo” the stories of inspiration and perspiration of my BFF. All of them won’t stop until their goals are achieve. Get your Mojo!
More to come.
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