We saw “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” a few months ago. It is a remarkable tale of William’s ingenuity and perseverance amidst severe famine in Malawi.
The story is set in 2002 when William’s family struggles to survive as farmers in Malawi – preventing him from continuing his education. However, he discovers a book about energy production and gets inspired to learn English to understand the content. That then leads to him gathering materials from junkyards – improvising discarded items like plastic pipes and bicycle parts – to build his windmill.
After a seemingly unending set of setbacks and skepticism, he finally builds a functional windmill that generates electricity for his home and village. That in turn improves powers a water pump that improves agricultural productivity.
Stories like this never fail to get me thinking about privilege. The amount of privilege we have is proportional to the number of essentials that people around the world worry about that we don’t have to think about.
It also reminded me about the massive role energy infrastructure play in enabling privilege. Access to energy is a gamechanger.
And, finally, if a plucky boy in Malawi never gave up on his desire to make a difference to his community, there’s so much more I can do as well.
