The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (27 page)

I wasn’t even sure what a conference was, or what people did at such things. The application didn’t say where it was held. I suspected Lilongwe but didn’t know. I began to imagine myself walking the streets of the capital, seeing all the many kinds of people. People said Lilongwe was filled with thieves, but I wasn’t afraid. If anything happened to me, I’d already decided I’d go to the market and ask help from some women. Women will always help you. But what would I wear to this conference? Everything I owned hung from a rope in my bedroom and was red from the roof dust. Even still, it gave me something to dream about.

In the beginning of January, just after New Year’s, one of Dr. Mchazime’s colleagues called Geoffrey’s phone (I didn’t have a mobile), to pass along a message that I’d been selected for the TED conference.

“Tell him to get ready,” he told Geoffrey. “He’s going on a journey.”

Geoffrey didn’t know the details, but said Dr. Mchazime would phone
me. Later that week, Dr. Mchazime called again. I happened to be standing nearby and Geoffrey handed me the phone.

“You’re going to Arusha, Tanzania,” he said. “You’ll be honored with other scientists and inventors. People from all over the world will be there. Perhaps something good can come from it.”

Wow, Arusha. I imagined the bus ride. How long would that take? I’d have to bring plenty of food, perhaps cakes and roasted maize. After all, I had no money.

“One important thing,” he said. “We should book your flight before it fills up.”

“I’m traveling by plane?
My God.
”

“Yes, and they wish to know if you want a smoking or nonsmoking room in the hotel.”

“Hotel? I’m staying at a hotel?” I thought for sure I’d be sleeping in one of those guesthouses near the boozing dens where the poor people stay.

“Of course you’re staying in a hotel,” he said. “And I have other good news. William, you’re going back to school.”

F
INALLY, AFTER MONTHS OF
haggling with the Ministry of Education, I was given permission to attend Madisi Secondary, a public boarding school an hour from my home. It wasn’t one of the science-oriented schools that Dr. Mchazime had suggested. The headmasters at those schools weren’t willing to accept me on account of my old age and number of years I’d been a dropout. However, the headmaster of Madisi, Mister Rhonex Banda, was so moved by my story he offered to spend the extra time helping me catch up. I was so terribly behind.

While Dr. Mchazime planned my trip to Arusha, I packed my things and went to school. This was the first time I’d ever lived away from home. I had a black suitcase I’d purchased a few weeks earlier in Lilongwe while visiting Geoffrey’s brother Jeremiah, who’d moved to the city a couple years before. Along with a toothbrush and toothpaste, I packed my flip-flops, a blanket, three T-shirts, a pair of trousers, one nice shirt, one pair
of socks, and two pairs of underpants. The bag had wheels, so I rolled it out through the courtyard and stopped under the mango tree. My parents were waiting, along with Geoffrey.

“I guess I’ll see you soon,” I said.

“Work hard,” my father said. “I want you to know we’re very proud.”

Geoffrey strapped my suitcase to his bicycle, and we rolled it down the trail toward the pickup stop. Along the way, we stopped at Gilbert’s house.

“We don’t have phones, how will we talk?” Gilbert asked.

“It will be difficult,” I said.

“Maybe I can come visit you there.”

“Oh, Gilbert, that would be great. Please do.”

“I’ll miss you, friend.”

“For sure.”

We stopped and waited at the pickup stop, and soon a truck appeared from down the road in a cloud of red dust. Geoffrey waved his hand and flagged down the driver.

“I’ll see you when school ends,” he said. “When you arrive, find someone with a phone and send me their number. We’ll talk this way, and I’ll make sure Gilbert is there.”

“That would be good,” I said. “Take care of my windmill, will you? Let me know everything that happens.”

“Sure, sure, don’t worry.”

I squeezed into the pickup with the other passengers, found a sack of charcoal for a seat, and we rolled on to Kasungu. Once there, I caught a minibus down M1 highway to the small town of Madisi. The bus dropped me at a junction on the outskirts of town, where a long road led to the school. I walked a kilometer with my suitcase bouncing behind on the gravel road, until I stood outside the steel gates. In a matter of minutes, I had a dorm room and dorm mates, mealtimes, and a rigorous schedule of classes. Everything was new and foreign and a little overwhelming—but my God, what a pleasure it was to be learning in a real school.

The classrooms in Madisi had solid roofs that didn’t leak and smooth
concrete floors that didn’t have holes. Large unbroken windows let in the sunshine, but kept out the cold. I had an actual desk of my own, complete with pencil holder. During study sessions at night, real fluorescent lights buzzed up above (at least when we weren’t having a blackout).

Science class was held in an actual chemistry lab, where the shelves were lined with light microscopes, giant coils of high-resistance wire, glass beakers, and old jars of boric acid. If you can believe it, one of the first lessons our teacher, Mister Precious Kocholola, gave us was about the process of current passing through an electric bell. I’d already applied this concept with my windmill and circuit breaker, but having it explained in scientific terms—in English—was like hearing it for the first time.

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. Most of the equipment in the science lab was from President Banda’s time, and it was so old that it no longer worked. The chemicals were expired and dangerous, the microscopes rusted and scratched, and for the electric bell lecture, we had no working batteries to supply the power.

“If anyone has an extra dry cell in their rooms, I’ll happily demonstrate,” the teacher said.

No one did, so we simply used our imaginations.

Our dorms were dirty, and the walls were covered with graffiti. The urinals in the bathroom didn’t work, so the Form One students (namely me, the new guy) had to clean them every day to keep down the smell. The rooms themselves were so cramped that two boys were forced to squeeze into one small bed. My bedmate was a boy named Kennedy, who never cleaned his socks.

“
Eh,
man, you need to wash your feet before you come to bed with me,” I told him.

“Sorry, I can’t ever tell,” he said. “I’ll wash tomorrow, promise.”

But he never did. Often I’d wake up with his feet touching my mouth.

I was several years older than everyone else, so some students started teasing me.

“How many kids did you leave behind at the farm, old man?” they shouted.

“Two boys,” I said, “and another one on the way. Perhaps next month.”

“The old man thinks he’s funny,” they said. “You’ve spent too much time with your cows, herd boy.”

One day I decided to end the teasing once and for all. I pulled out the newspaper article about my windmill and put it on the table. “Here,” I said. “This is what I was doing.”

The boys in my dorm were impressed. “Good job, man!” they said. “How did you manage?” No one teased me after that.

Really, after five years of being a dropout, I was grateful to be in school. But after a couple weeks in this strange place, plus the loneliness from being away from my home and family, I became a little sad. Often after class, I’d hide away in the school library, where the books filled rows and rows of shelves. I’d find a chair and study my lesson books in geography, social studies, agriculture, biology, English, and math. I became lost in American and African history, and within the colorful maps of the world. No matter how foreign and lonely the world was outside, the books always reminded me of home, sitting under the mango tree.

W
HILE
I
ATTENDED SCHOOL
at Madisi, Dr. Mchazime was busy making arrangements for the trip to Arusha. Several months before, he’d helped me get a passport. And since I’d never been on an airplane or stayed in a hotel before, he took me out of school one weekend for a crash course on international travel. I took a minibus six hours to Zomba, and we visited the Hotel Masongola, where many tourists stay. He asked the manager to show me a room, how to fill out the guest cards, and how to order in the restaurant. But since the Masongola was too expensive, Dr. Mchazime booked me a room at Peter’s Lodge. It was my first night in a hotel, and the first time I’d ever slept on a real mattress.

Dr. Mchazime had also taken a collection to buy me a smart white
shirt and black trousers for my journey. They were the nicest clothes I’d ever owned. He also gave me other useful travel advice: for instance, on a plane, I’d be assigned a seat that was mine and mine only, so there was no need to rush and use your elbows like the minibus; if the red light is on near the lavatory, that means it’s occupied; and because some people get upset stomachs on their first plane ride, each seat comes with a paper bag for vomit. I was glad to have that bag because I was certain I would need it.

In June, I left school and took a minibus back home to pack. The next morning, a driver appeared to take me to the airport in Lilongwe.

“Our son is leaving us and traveling by airplane,” my father said to my mother, smiling.

“That’s right,” I said. “Flying like a bird in the sky. I’ll be waving as I pass over.”

“We’ll be watching for you. You’ll see us here.”

My father then tucked a bag of roasted groundnuts in my pocket. They were still warm.

T
HAT EVENING IN
L
ILONGWE,
I was too nervous to sleep, and I stayed up all night in my hotel room watching Super Sport. I was still awake when the sun came up and it was time to leave.

On the plane, I couldn’t believe it, but sitting next to me was none other than Soyapi Mumba, the software engineer from Lilongwe who’d first seen my article. Because he’s a nice guy, he introduced himself, not knowing who I was. When I said my name and where I was going, he said, “Oh my God, William the windmill guy?” and told me that he’d been the one who’d shown my story to Mike McKay, who blogged about me on Hacktivate. Soyapi was the very reason anybody had even heard about me and my windmill, and the reason why I was going to this conference. Now here he was, sitting next to me on the plane! It also happened that Soyapi was a TED fellow himself, being honored for his coding work with Baobab. I was so happy to find him.

The airplane was bright and clean, and the air-conditioning felt so
cool and pleasant on such a hot day. What a great place to be! As the plane taxied toward the runway, I gripped the seat, smiling big. I was certain everyone knew it was my first time. The people seated around me were so well-dressed and confident. They had important things to do, and their busy lives required them to travel in airplanes across the world. As the jet accelerated down the runway and lifted its nose in the air, I pressed my head back in the seat and laughed.

I guess I was now one of them, too.

W
HEN WE ARRIVED AT
the airport in Arusha, Soyapi helped me through customs and immigration, translating for me when my nerves caused my English to disappear. He was staying in a different hotel, so after we got our bags, we parted ways, and I boarded a shuttle bus for the Arusha Hotel. It was dark by the time we left, and I wondered what this new, foreign land would reveal to me in the morning.

The conference was held at the Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge about thirty kilometers outside Arusha. The next morning, pulling out of my hotel, I looked around to see if Tanzania looked and smelled any different than Malawi, but what I saw was very similar: the interstate was filled with minibuses pressed full of people; a giant lorry belched smoke out its back and swerved to miss an old man on a wobbly bicycle. There were children in rags hawking cigarettes on the roadside, while students in bright uniforms marched through the dust to school; I saw village women balancing loads of vegetables on their heads and farmers tending their fields.

But unlike Malawi, Arusha had trees—and not only that. After some minutes, the shuttle driver pointed in the distance and said, “Look there—Kilimanjaro. The biggest mountain in Africa.”

There it was, just like in the books, with white clouds covering its top. I couldn’t believe that ordinary people like myself climb that great moun
tain, but I knew they did. When Dr. Mchazime had said there was a great journey ahead of me, I guess he was right. In my head, I began making a list of all the other places in the world I wanted to see.

Kilimanjaro had filled me with great confidence, but it all seemed to vanish once I reached the hotel where the conference was being held. The lobby was filled with so many different kinds of people—lots of white people from Europe and America. There were also many Africans among them, but even they spoke quickly and with strange accents. Everyone was talking on their mobile phones, and I prayed that no one would speak to me. After registering at the welcome center, I walked to the corner of the room and tried to disappear.

No such luck. After some minutes, a man walked up and stuck out his hand. He had red hair and wore bright purple and green glasses.

“Hello, welcome to TED,” he said. “My name is Tom. Who are you?”

I’d practiced only one line of English, so I let it fly: “I’m William Kamkwamba, and I’m from Malawi.”

He stared at me strangely. Maybe I’d said it in Chichewa.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re the guy with the windmill.”

Tom Rielly was in charge of organizing all the corporate sponsors at TED, including the ones who’d paid for my airfare and hotel. Months earlier at the TED offices in New York, Emeka—the Nigerian blogger—had told Tom about my windmill, saying, “You’ll never believe this story…” But Tom didn’t know that Emeka had then searched under every rock in Malawi to find me and bring me to Arusha. After some minutes—me struggling with the few words of English I knew—Tom asked if I wanted to tell my story on stage to all the “TEDsters,” as he called them. I shrugged. Why not?

“Do you have a computer?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t have.”

“Do you have any photos of the windmill?”

I did have these. A friend of Dr. Mchazime’s had visited Madisi a few weeks before and helped prepare a presentation, just in case, using photos
supplied by the journalists who’d visited my house. He’d done this with a laptop he’d pulled out of his bag—though at the time I had no idea this was a computer. To me, computers were big like televisions and plugged into the wall. We had a few of these at Madisi from President Banda’s time, but none of them worked. Before he left, this man handed me a strange cube (a flash drive) attached to a rope and said, “Wear this around your neck. This is your presentation.” So when Tom asked about my photos, I unbuttoned my shirt to pull out the rope. Tom looked at me funny, then took the cube and plugged it into his own laptop.

“I’ll just copy these onto my computer,” he said.

It was then I realized what a laptop was.
Of course,
I thought.
It’s a portable computer. What a good idea!

Sensing my delight at seeing his laptop, Tom asked me, “William, have you ever seen the Internet?”

“No.”

In a quiet conference room, Tom sat me down at his computer and explained the track pad, how the motion of my fingers guided the arrow on the screen.

“This is Google,” he said. “You can find answers to anything. What do you want to search for?”

“Windmill.”

In one second, he’d pulled up five million page results—pictures and models of windmills I’d never even imagined. We did the same for solar power. Next, we pulled up a map of Malawi on Google Earth, then a photo of Wimbe itself, taken from a camera in outer space. It’s funny to me now—at this conference in East Africa, with some of the world’s greatest minds in science and technology just outside the door, there I was in this room seeing the Internet for the first time. They could have put a blinking sign over my head and charged admission.

Tom then helped me set up my own e-mail account, even sending me a message from another computer to demonstrate. Over the next two days, I’d be introduced to so many amazing pieces of technology, things like BlackBerrys, video and digital cameras, even an iPod Nano, which
I turned over and over in my hand before finally asking, “Where is its battery?” (Not long after, I’d be hacking into these iPods and repairing them.)

But the most amazing thing about TED wasn’t the Internet, the gadgets, or even the breakfast buffets with three kinds of meat, plus eggs and pastries and fruits that I dreamed about each night. It was the other Africans who stood onstage each day and shared their stories and vision of how to make our continent a better place for our people.

There was Corneille Ewango, a botanist from Congo who’d risked his life to save endangered animals during the war; he’d even buried his Land Rover engines and stashed lab equipment in the trees to hide them from rebels. A man from Ethiopia invented a kind of refrigerator that works using water evaporation from sand to use in villages without power. A Nigerian named Bola Olabisi started a group to bring together all the women inventors of Africa. Other “TEDsters” were doctors and scientists using creative ideas and methods to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Even Erik Hersman was there—one of the first people, along with Mike McKay, to write about my windmill on his blog Afrigadget. Erik wasn’t a biological African (he
was
raised in Kenya and Sudan), but what he said summed up our crowd perfectly:

“Africans bend what little they have to their will every day. Using creativity, they overcome Africa’s challenges. Where the world sees trash, Africa recycles. Where the world sees junk, Africa sees rebirth.”

Tom helped me prepare the words to say during my own presentation, but of course, they flew out of my head the minute I walked inside the hall. The PowerPoint deck I’d brought with me was a little too long, so Chris Anderson, the TED curator, was going to ask me a few questions onstage instead. By the time I heard Chris call my name, my legs refused to work.

“Don’t worry,” Tom whispered, patting my shoulder. “Just take a deep breath.”

My heart beat fast like a
mganda
drum as I climbed the steps to face the audience, which totaled about four hundred fifty people—among them all the inventors and scientists and doctors who’d stood on that stage
in the previous days. They were all in their seats now, watching me. When I walked up the steps and turned around, I went totally blind. Bright lights from the ceiling were shining into my eyes, so bright I couldn’t think. All the words I’d prepared seemed to dance to the drum and get lost in the glare.

“We’ve got a picture,” said Chris. He pointed to something behind me, and instantly a giant photo of my parents’ house appeared on the wall. I saw the mud-brick walls, grass roof, bright blue sky. I could practically feel the sun.

“Where is this?” he asked.

“This is my home. This is where I live.”

“Where? What country?”

“In Malawi, Kasungu,” I said.
No, that’s wrong.
I quickly corrected myself. “Ah, Kasungu, Malawi,” I added. My hands started to shake.

“Five years ago you had an idea,” Chris said. “What was that?”

“I want to made a windmill.”
Wrong again.
Chris smiled.

“So what did you do, how did you realize that?”

I took a deep breath and gave it my best. “After I drop out from school, I went to library…and I get information about windmill…”
Keep going, keep going…
“And I try, and I made it.”

I expected the audience to laugh at my silly English, but to my surprise, all I heard was applause. Not only were people clapping, but they stood up in their seats and cheered. And when I finally returned to my chair, I noticed that several of them were even crying. After all those years of trouble—the famine and constant fear for my family, dropping out of school and my father’s grief, Khamba’s death, and the teasing I received trying to develop an idea—after all that, I was finally being recognized. For the first time in my life, I felt I was surrounded by people who understood what I did. A great weight seemed to leave my chest and fall to the assembly hall floor. I could finally relax. I was now among colleagues.

For the next couple of days, they lined up to meet me.

“William, can I take my photo with you?”

“William, please join us for lunch!”

One line from my presentation even became a kind of motto for the conference. Everywhere I went, people were shouting, “I try, and I made it!” I was so flattered. I wished my parents, Gilbert, and Geoffrey had been there to see it; they’d have been so proud.

S
OMETHING ABOUT MY STORY
seemed to tug at Tom’s heart. He later told me that as a boy, he’d also spent much of his time tinkering with electronics and dreaming up experiments. When I first met him, he asked what I hoped to obtain someday in my life. I told him I had two goals: to remain in school and to build a bigger windmill to irrigate my family’s crops, so we’d never go hungry again. Such a request seemed impossible by Malawian standards, and most people in my country spend entire lifetimes watching such dreams fade. But with the power and influence of the TED community all gathered in Arusha, Tom concluded that school fees and a windmill were relatively simple things to ask for. Tom suggested that since I was a budding entrepreneur—with a good PowerPoint-presentation, no less—we should try and raise money to achieve those goals.

“You’re like a Silicon Valley startup, and I’m going to be on your board of directors,” he said. “Let’s take this presentation and show it around. We’re going to get you some money.”

I didn’t know anything about Silicon Valley, but I was willing to let him help. For the rest of the conference, with my presentation on his laptop, Tom approached many American investors and business leaders and asked them to help with my projects. He cornered them at dinner and followed them back to their hotels in the shuttle, standing up along the potholed African roads to tell my story. Almost everyone he approached agreed to help; some even opened their wallets right there and handed us hundred-dollar bills.

John Doerr, one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world, volunteered to be one of my first investors. Others such as John Gage, chief scientist from Sun Microsystems, and Jay Walker, a fellow inventor and
founder of Priceline.com, later agreed to chip in. I’m so grateful to these kind people and pray that God blesses them all.

After the conference, instead of returning home, Tom flew back to Malawi to help get me enrolled in a better school and to purchase some of the materials I needed to expand the windmill. One of the first things we did in Lilongwe was to buy two mobile phones, one for me and one for my parents, so we could communicate while I was away from home. This way I’d never feel lonely.

Along with Dr. Mchazime, we took a taxi to the village and met my family. When we turned onto the dirt road toward my home, the windmill appeared in the distance, looking so beautiful. As usual, its blades were spinning fast and causing the tower to sway back and forth. Tom stood at the bottom for a long time, taking photos and staring up at it.

“It’s more than functional,” he said. “William, this is art.”

I gave him a tour of the compound, showing him the car battery and bulbs. He laughed at the pile of radio and tractor parts in the corner of my room. “I think every great inventor has a junk pile someplace,” he said. I also demonstrated the light switches, circuit breaker, and the way I’d waterproofed my bulb outside. For the porch light, all I’d had was a small car light, so I’d hollowed out a regular incandescent bulb and wired the car light inside. This shell served as both a weather protector and diffuser.

“There’s more to this than I thought,” Tom said.

I just laughed. I hadn’t even told him about the famine.

Back in Lilongwe, Tom and I visited the offices of Baobab Health, located on the grounds of Kamuzu Central Hospital, to see Soyapi and finally meet Mike McKay. Baobab was founded in 2000 by a British-Canadian computer scientist named Gerry Douglas. He’d once been a volunteer with the Ministry of Health and noticed the inefficient methods still used to collect information. Patients were registered by pencil in a big dusty book, which made it nearly impossible to retrieve medical records and compile statistics. Sick people often waited four hours in line just to register and see the doctor. With no easy solutions to this problem, Gerry made his own.

Back home in Pittsburgh, where he lived most of the year with his
family, he was on eBay and came across a warehouse full of discontinued iOpener computers—small, cheap units with their hardware built into the screen panels. Gerry initially bought two hundred for twenty dollars apiece, then hacked them into touch-screen systems. He stuck them inside desks with wheels and powered them with car batteries. Over time, he created software that allowed even the most poorly trained hospital staff to scan a bar code and register patients in under a minute. The screen also showed patients’ medical histories and how to prescribe their medication, a system that did wonders in giving antiretroviral treatment to people with AIDS. The system’s technology, and the efficiency it provided, was in many ways more advanced than anything being used in hospitals in America.