Chem- Boy who harnessed the wind – Flashcards

In this chapter, the author William Kamkwamba tells the story how he was saved by his father from certain death and thus became his hero. Magic have been a powerful force in their lives for generations. Everyone feared magic except his father. Magic existed in stories and his father had a lot of stories to tell. How he was saved by his father went like this. There were these herd boys passing through his village that found a sack of bubble gum on the road where he was playing. After a bit of hesitation, one of the boys gave him a handful of gumballs which he immediately gobbled up. It was the next day that he learned the trader owner of the sack came looking for it and was asking his father for information. The trader even mentioned that he had employed the services of the witch doctor in placing a curse to those who ate the gumballs. Upon hearing this, William who was six years old, got sick in his stomach and tried everything to rid himself of the traces of the gumballs, he later went to his father and came clean, pleading he did not want to die. The father solved the problem by going to the trader and told him how his son got involved with the missing sack. His father had to pay the trader a one week pay and thus he was saved.

His father is named Trywell who was not a farmer at that time but a traveling trader. He resided in a town called Dowa, a place where men could make money. During that time, Malawi was a country ruled by a dictator, Hastings Kumuzu Banda. He ruled for more than 30 years. This chapter dealt mostly about the life of a trader like hitching in pickups to Lake Malawi and buying things like dried fish, rice and used clothing to sell back in Dowa. At the lake bartering is done with the Yao, muslim businessmen who lived in that area. His father is a strong man but his tolerance of alcohol is not strong. When he was drunk, it led him to a fistfight. One such occasion was the July 6 independence day celebration. His father singlehandedly defeated the police and a pack of Young Pioneers on the dance floor. Too exhausted, the father let himself got arrested. It was in the marketplace where his father spotted Agnes, who later became his mother after some courtship and a bit of family discussion on his mother's side. Because of his father's drunken lifestyle, he was called the Pope. However, an unfortunate incident with another drunken man transformed the father to a child of God. Not long after, a big turn of events happened. William's Uncle John convinced his father to become a farmer and moved to Masitala village. His father became a landowner of a small farm. It was in this village where he encountered Mr. Phiri who was magical strength caused by mangolomera running in his veins. Mr. Phiri's strength was demonstrated after a fight with James who was taller and also strong. Shabani, Mr. Phiri's nephew boasted of being a witch doctor who possessed mangolomera , performed the painful rite on William but his magic did not work. William was defeated in a fight after a soccer game in Dowa. When confronted, Shabani responded that William should not have taken a bath after the rite which was not mentioned at all.

Janauary 1997 was a sad year. William was nine years old when his Uncle John died. Relatives and friends came to mourn and paid respect. After some speeches and discussion of the transfer of wealth and properties, the coffin was lowered into the grave. It was customary to bestow the wealth to the firstborn child, so the farm and the mills were given to Jeremiah which was lost after two years. Another uncle, named Socrates lost his job and had to move his family back to a shed next to William's house. A dog named Khamba came with them, became a loyal friend to William. Hunting was a favorite pastime for William and his friends and at times brought the dog along. They enjoyed the meat of the birds while Khamba just slurped the entrails.

When William turned thirteen, hunting was not cool anymore but hanging out was. At the trading center, he was out there with friend Gilbert and cousin Geoffrey meeting new people and playing bawo. One time Khamba was tagging along prompting people to tease William. It was in this time frame that he and Geoffrey started tinkering with broken radios. He would looked at the circuit boards and wondered what the wires did. He learned that the bean-looking parts were transistors which control the power to the speaker. They also learned how the radio picks up each band, AM, FM or short wave. For FM, the radio used an internal antenna because the waves are long while for the short waves AM, an outside antenna is used. They discovered all these through trial and error. Pretty soon, they had a little business going because people were bringing their broken radios for repair. To know which part was broken, they attached the radio to working used batteries, collected from waste bins. Helping his father in the farm took a lot of William's time. He talked about his daily meal consisting of nsima, maize or corn flour, mustard or pumpkin leaves, very rare goat or chicken. His favorite is dried fish with tomatoes. December is the start of the planting season. His favorite job was making planting stations. However, December 2000 was a disaster. The rains were late, and drought would continue for several seasons.

His next discovery was the principle of the dynamo. Although he had seen them on bicycles, he did not pay attention to them until now. He asked questions and he got answers like pedaling made the lamp worked because the dynamo attached to the wheel was rotating. One day, he noticed the wires to the lamp were loose. With the wheel spinning, he touched the wires to the metal handle bar of the bike and saw a spark. This discovery led to his next experiment. He attached the wires to the negative and positive heads of a radio. After spinning the wheel, nothing happened. Next he attached the wires to the lamp. After spinning the wheel, the lamp flickered. Then he took batteries and connected them to the lamp. The lamp worked. So the next step was to connect the wires to another socket labeled AC on the radio. That way, music came out. Now, he knew how to bring electricity to his home. At the time of this discovery, something dreadful was happening in his village. There was a shortage of food. People were willing to work for food. Everybody including Khamba has to tighten his belt and sacrificed a meal or two. Equally bad news was the beating of Chief Wimbe, father of Geoffrey after he spoke in a protest rally against President Muluzu.

It was planting season again. Some were not able to plant because they were busy looking for piecework. For William, they were lucky to have planted a small crop of corn. However, the father announced a terrible thing, his family meal would be further reduced to one meal a day. A bit of good tidings fell on the family when another girl was born healthy. To stretch their food, the father came up with the idea of selling their food at the market. The mother would cooked it, sold pieces of it in the market, and thereby making a profit in the process. Normally, Christmas was a time of eating good food, but this Christmas 2001 was terrible for William. There was no fresh bread, butter, tea with milk and sugar and no chicken and rice for supper. William's desire to eat meat brought him to his cousin Charity. They went to the soup stand of James and for discarded goat skins. After the cleaning and boiling the skin for three hours, they satisfied their craving for meat at Christmas. Even Khamba had a share

William learned that he will be attending Kachokolo Secondary School, the worst in the district come January. Meanwhile food situation was getting worse. Price of corn skyrocketed. William's mother continued selling food cakes to make ends meet. Food was running out in Malawi and people feared the government was collapsing, so they went to the bank and withdrew their savings. On the bright side, William was looking forward to his first day of school. He would be wearing a pair of black trousers and white shirt which was bought in used clothing stall. He and Gilbert took the forty minute walk to school over hills and corn fields. To his disappointment, the headmaster, Mr. Phiri, told him he broke a rule by not wearing the proper uniform. He was not even wearing shoes. He had a pair of sandals which was not allowed. He cited the rain as justification for wearing sandals so he was not sent home. The conditions at the school were deplorable. There were no desks, so students sat on the floor. He did not have textbooks, his parents could not afford them. It was in February that he had to drop out because he did not have the money for the school fees that were due. In the meantime, famine had enveloped the population. It was every man for himself

William's family meal hit rock bottom. Instead of a mouthful of food, the mother only served enough for a taste. He went to bed that night on a really empty stomach. Khamba fared not any better. He was starving to death. The dog's last meal was the Christmas goat skin. In the morning, William took Khamba with him to hunt. After setting his trap with ash as the bait, birds swooped down on the kill zone. But before he could let go of the sling, the birds realized the bait and flew away. He and Khamba went home emptyhanded. Khamba was getting worse, he could not keep a meal of pumpkin leaves. When Charity and Mizcek suggested to William to put the dog out of misery, after much thought, he agreed. The dog was tied to a tree in the forest and left to die. The next day, William went back to bury his dog. Two weeks later, cholera epidemic swept the district. People were dying left and right. In the Kamkwamba household, William's sister Mayless contracted malaria but survived. Around mid-February, things started to get better. Their crop of tobacco and maize are shaping up. His father already made deals for the tobacco. When March came, the corns were ready and also the pumpkins. They survived and others too.

During the famine, a lot of students dropped out. But Gilbert continued on with his classes. William passed the time at the trading center playing bawo and chess. They still did not have the money for school. However, there was this library in Wimbe Primary School stocked with books donated by the American government. He did a course of self study in the library on subjects like geography, social studies, English, History and Science. The library was managed by Mrs. Sikelo, an English teacher. William and Gilbert went to the library and read books on Integrated Science and learned about scabies, cancer, spacesuit, turbine and dynamo. The book called Explaining Physics taught them about vacuum brakes of cars, engine combustion, electroscope, kinetic energy and diode. He spent two weeks reading the book and came to the chapter of his favorite topic, magnets. The book explained everything that there is to know about magnets. It also showed how to make magnets out of nails, wire and dry cells. When electricity passes thru a wire, a magnetic field is created around the wire. This field can be made stronger if the wire is coiled around a good conductor like a nail. In an electric motor, a coil of wire on a shaft is house inside a large magnet. When a current is passed to the coil, it becomes a magnet. The push and pull of the two magnets caused the shaft to spin. If the shaft is attached to a fan, you have a cooling fan. Just as electricity can cause a shaft to spin, a spinning shaft that cuts a magnetic field can produce electricity. The electricity produced is called AC or alternating current. The batteries can only produce DC or direct current. The best example of an AC current is produced by the bicycle dynamo according to the book. In the dynamo, the rider provides the energy to rotate the coil of the dynamo to produce the electricity to light the lamp of the bicycle. By accident, William came upon a book at the library titled Using Energy. Pictures of windmills were featured in the book. He learned about windmills. Using his acquired knowledge of the dynamo, he figured that the wind would be the rider to spin the blades of the windmills and thus create electricity. He marveled at the thought of having lights and a pump for irrigation for his family. Like most inventors, he built a small model at first using things that he could get his hands on around the house. The first one did not work. There was success on the second one. The third model which was much bigger and used sturdy materials taken from a scrapyard and a dynamo was much more promising.

School was about to open for a new term. William went back to school. However, he had to play cat and mouse to attend classes for non-payment of fees. Finally the teacher caught up to his tricks and was sent home. His father came to his rescue by promising to pay the school once the tobacco were sold, in about three weeks. He enjoyed going to school during that grace period. However that enjoyment ended when the proceeds from the sale of the tobacco ended up short. He was out of school again. He helped in the harvesting and harvest time was over, he return to the scrapyard looking for windmill pieces. At last, he had accumulated a shock absorber, tractor fan, bearings, PVC pipes and the greatest of all, his dad's bicycle. The only thing missing is the power generator, in this case, a dynamo. As luck would have it, after a month, he was able to buy a dynamo from a man on a bicycle with Gilbert's money

William was ready to build his windmill. First he looked for a wide space where he could do the assembly. Then, he connected the blades to the tractor fan with nuts and bolts bought by Gilbert. The wingspan of the blade system was more than eight feet across. Attaching the blades to the bike was a challenge but William was up to the challenge. Next he attached the dynamo onto the bike frame making sure it was hugging the sidewall of the tire. Last, he replaced the chain to the front and back sprockets. By this time, it was suppertime. He woke up in the morning pondering how to move and lift the heavy machine. He planned to put this on top of a wooden tower. First he tested the machine. It worked and but was too strong power on his dad's radio. He then discovered the term called dissipation. Two days passed before Gilbert, Geoffrey and William built the wooden tower consisting of wooden poles each one buried in holes equidistant from each other. By sundown the tower was standing up. It was in the morning that they were able to place the windmill on the tower by using elbow grease and ingenuity. The final touch was to attach the lamp to the dynamo. Meanwhile on lookers were gathering around them wondering what was happening. The moment came when a strong gust of wind blew and the blades were spinning like mad. The lamp flickered once and then steady light came on. Exuberation!!! After about a month, he managed to built a light system in his room by running copper wires from the windmill to his home.

William was getting tired of running to the trading center to recharge his Cousin Rose's mobile phone. After complaining to Rose, she said, "why don't you use your windmill to recharge it?" Picking up the book Explaining Physics, he read the chapter on mutual induction and transformers and decided to build his step-up transformer, a device to increase the voltage. He then connected the primary coil of the device to the dynamo and the secondary coil wire to the prongs of a phone charger. Eureka!!! From the same book, he learned about charging battery. First convert the AC power from the dynamo to DC power by using diodes or rectifiers. He got a car battery, thanks to Charity. This addition enabled him to power up his installed bulbs around the house that runs on DC that has their own separate switch. The book also taught him how to use proper wiring and the use of a circuit breaker. He improvised a circuit breaker using the electric bell as a model. As time went by, he made improvements to his windmill. He had to. The chain keeps coming off everytime there was a violent gust of wind. Geoffrey gave him the idea of using a belt rather than a chain just like the ones used in the grinding machines. He found two pulleys from the scrapyard. A man from the trading center gave him a wornout belt from a grinding machine which worked for a while. Finally, Geoffrey came back and gave him a good belt that worked perfect.

The start of classes at Kachokolo was fast approaching and there was no way William would have the money for school..One afternoon, the Kaphuka Private School was advertised on the radio. He asked his father what he thought about that school. His father said that when all their debts are said and done, they will be able to send him back to school. To fight boredom, he kept going back to the library and read everything just to increase his general knowledge. He got curious about how a transmitter works. So, he conducted an experiment using two radios. One radio was tuned to a static frequency, the second radio was tuned to the same place on the dial. There was no sound from the second radio, he theorized that the frequency of the one radio was penetrating the other and therefore he could put his own voice on top of that frequency. This was proven correct when he used a walkman with a cassette player as the second radio. He was able to hear the cassette tape music on the other radio after detaching the speaker wires of the walkman and connecting them to the condenser. The windmill and the radio transmitter were successful ideas but other ideas like building a water pump, biogas production from animal feces were failures. Sadness struck the Kamkwamba family. The mother was stricken with malaria. Luckily, she recovered. Later, another tragic event happened. Gilbert's father, Chief Wimbe died. On top of these, famine had stuck again. This bad luck was attributed to magic