The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Chapter 11–Epilogue

I took the fan, blades, bolts, and the dynamo outside behind our kitchen and arranged them in a neat row along the hard, barren dirt.

As I worked, I could hear my mother humming to herself in the kitchen as she prepared our supper, every once in a while whispering something to Tiyamike, who lay quietly on a pallet by the door.

For once, the radio was turned off and I savored the rare silence and delicious smell of beans wafting from the kitchen.

Just behind my bedroom, we dug three holes at one meter deep, each equidistant from the other.

Little by little, the windmill made its way up the tower. With each pull, it swung slightly and banged its cumbersome blades against the tower’s wood frame.

I was still high from the experience and needed to burn off some energy, so I went to the trading center to bask in the glory.

“How did you manage such a thing?” they asked.
“Hard work and lots of research,” I’d say, trying not to sound too smug.

However, regular incandescent bulbs used in most homes will only work with AC power, so I had to look for alternatives.

I pretended to be one of reporters on the radio, barging in with my microphone.

Since I didn’t have a proper conduit to house them, the positive and negative wires leading from the bulbs and switches were simply nailed to the walls and across the ceiling like a heap of Christmas lights.

The circuit breaker in the diagram used fuses, which contained tiny metal filaments that melted when the overload occurred.

The polarity is determined by which direction the current runs in, and I’d wrapped the nails with wire so the one closest to the magnet pushed, while the other nail pulled.

A pulley was just what I needed to increase the tension between the front and back sprockets, which was the reason the chain kept flying off. And unlike a chain, a belt didn’t have troublesome cogs that constantly required grease, which I’d long run out of.

Instead we began growing crops that didn’t need fertilizer and could be easily sold in the market, things such as soybeans, groundnuts, and beans. But even though it was great to have these extra commodities to sell, the prices weren’t high enough in the market to make any serious money—certainly not enough to send me back to school.

So taking the two radios, I tuned one to a static frequency, then took the second and tuned it to the same place on the dial. When this happened, the second radio went silent: no white noise, nothing.

Over the course of the next year, there was hardly a moment when I wasn’t planning or devising some new scheme.

Although the windmill-driven pump wouldn’t come until later, I started work on a prototype pump just to play around with the concept.

As I mentioned earlier, deforestation in Malawi has made it very difficult to find firewood for cooking, and gathering wood only adds to this destructive cycle.

I reached over and quickly popped out the reed, and when I did, a pipe of silver steam came rushing out the top. My mother was right, it smelled vile.

That afternoon, my aunt Chrissy and Socrates’ wife, Mary, arrived and stayed through the night, keeping vigil.

Her chest rose and fell from her labored breaths like a toy boat on the waves.

Someone erected a large canopy for the family and delegation of chiefs and officials who’d arrived from all over.

The funeral dirge was slow and steady, then rose in tempo.

The police conducted all-night searches, and one evening, they managed to corner the beast in a thicket.

Villagers then visited the sing’anga, who concocted a powerful potion and flung it into the trees.

A certain trader near Dowa had purchased some thunder and lightning from another powerful wizard and later refused to pay for it. In retaliation, the magic man had sent the beast against his family.

All those who had been mangled and killed were his relatives.

Sadly, magic was often the scapegoat for another great tragedy in Malawi: the spread of HIV and AIDS. Around this period, about 20 percent of all Malawians were infected, and many thousands died each year.

Not only had it killed tens of thousands of our teachers and further deprived our students of a good education, by 2008, AIDS had also killed many of our national entertainers, especially musicians, robbing our country of one of its proudest treasures.

For many years, our villages didn’t have proper clinics that addressed HIV because of the stigmas attached to it.

One afternoon while playing bawo in the trading center, some health personnel from Wimbe clinic approached us boys and began chatting.

My popularity as an inventor and activist soon attracted other opportunities.

Soon our yard was filled with crowds from the trading center who’d gathered around to gawk at the famous journalists who’d come to our village.

“He needs to continue his education and develop his abilities. That way these inventions will be credible and people will respect what he’s doing. Without education, he’s limited.”

“There are procedures that must be followed,” she said.
“Surely you can make an exception. Surely there’s some kind of waiver?”

But like every other school in Malawi, Madisi relied on the government to survive, and unlike some of the more prestigious boarding schools, it had been neglected.

Tom suggested that since I was a budding entrepreneur—with a good Power-Point presentation, no less—we should try and raise money to achieve those goals.

The spigot from the borehole—the only automatic water system for miles around—is also free for all the women in Wimbe to use.

But really, all the stimulation from the past week was too much for my brain to process, so I drifted back to the one place I knew.

The school brings together students from fifty-three countries with a mission to train Africa’s next generation of leaders. Out of 1,700 applicants, only 106 were accepted for its inaugural year.