The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

[adcooper]

This is a very quick and fascinating book, by a young man from Malawi. He lived in the worst poverty and nearly starved during a famine when he was a child, but he figured out how to build a windmill from junk parts and an old bicycle. I was astonished. Anyway, it's a great story, and I think I'll give my dad a copy for his birthday. Tinkerers will love it!

williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/williamkamkwamba/2009/04/my-book-the-boy-who-harnessed-the-wind.html

[niaru]

Oh, I heard about that book! Glad to know you liked it, Ann!

[Bara]

Oh, that looks wonderful, thank you.

[adcooper]

Bara, I thought this might interest you. Like many Americans, my sense of African geography is hazy at best. How far is Malawi from your old home?

[Bara]

Oh, golly, I don't know the mileage, Ann! I know we had to put the cars on a driftwood ferry - and that my dad drove the car into a ditch! My mother was not pleased at 10 o'clock at night. At that time, women couldn't got out without a long skirt and headgear. I suspect it may have changed.

www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/af.htm

I't Central Africa - right in the middle where the continent starts to narrow.

I only went there once for a couple of days for my cousin's wedding.

It was the next country up. Here we are. I grew up in Zambia; lived my young adult life in Zimbabwe. In the bad old Colonial days, it was known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Malawi being Nyasaland.

It was a very poor country, in those days, under Haile Selasi.

Can't wait for the book to arrive.