The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
By: William Kamkwamba, Bryan Mealer / Narrated By: Chike Johnson
Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
What a wonderful boy! What a wonderful audiobook!!!
I think a reviewer elsewhere who said this book was good for TED talk fans kinda sorta underestimated how absolutely appealing it is. Sure, there’s a bit of science and a whole lotta ingenuity, but this is a very human story about a boy we’d all wish to know.
The book opens in Kamwamba’s home country of Malawi, and the first part of the download, say 5 hours? is basic explanation of the country, its culture, relatives’ histories. It’s a country in which magic is still very much believed in, and agriculture is the main form of earning a, rather meager, living. I can sort of see where other people found it to be a bit much, a bit of a distraction from the main narrative that went on for far too long, but oh I dunno. After listening to entitled individuals bemoaning their fates and making every single situation about themselves (Unbecoming! Small Fry!), I found it refreshing to see someone born into tough circumstances who still had an unbelievably dear and curious attitude.
There is political unrest. There is hunger. And just when you think things can’t get worse for William and his relatives, for Malawi, hunger and starvation turn into famine (There’s, believe it or not, a difference between starvation and famine: Starvation is the old man who crumples, withered, to the ground and people step over his body to get flour; famine is walking skeletons, weakly trying to make flour out of grass, eating any type of root before succumbing to death). Coming out of the famine, people look around and greet each other with, “It’s you!” The response being, “Yes, I made it.”
The famine throws everything askew. William’s family is in debt, and going to school is an impossibility because fees must be paid, even for a semester missed due to lack of funds and famine. This is a tragedy for the boy as his incredible curiosity (He does, after all, disembowel radios to see how they work) begs to be stimulated, begs to be sated. See? Refreshing again! The teenage girls I work with haaaate school and are verrry vocal about it. But when a library opens up, William educates himself, attempting to keep up with his classes, plus going into very advanced science. And yes, after eons spent in the scrapyard, after an entire community jeering at him or telling him he’s foolish, he goes on to make a windmill, generating electricity for his family. This just leads him to dream of bigger things, and even BIGGER things.
Chike Johnson does a masterful job with narration as he captures the youth and enthusiasm of William. William also has two buddies who help him out every step of the way, and the way Johnson voices their interactions with each other, I felt I was experiencing a sort of Three Musketeers or something. Such fun and teasing he brought to them! I also liked the way he narrates how physically painful, how emotionally scarring the famine was (And tell me if you don’t shed a tear or two about “just a dog”). The whole thing is like listening to a grand play with good buddies, townsfolk afraid of witchcraft, an exasperated mama (Who does NOT appreciate her best cooking pot being used to boil goat dung), a wide cast of suffering, of enthusiastic characters.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is DEFinitely a feel-good kinda book. I was walking around outside in a blazing Central Texas summer day and, as I got to where William starts receiving recognition and good will, I found I had ACTUAL goosebumps on my really sweaty skin. Chills, I tell you! CHILLS!
This is not to be missed, esPECially if you’ve been doing Memoir listening that has left you cynical.
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