Excellent documentary – The boy who harnessed the wind

Just finished watching a documentary film – The boy who harnessed the wind. An amazing documentary I must say.

It is based on a real story of William Kamkwamba who builds a wind mill and pumps water from a well to irrigate the farms.

The village in Malawi (Africa) where the boy lives has inconsistent rains. Villagers were farming Tobacco previously, but the trees were sold for the wood at throwaway prices because of irregular supply of Tobacco.

He got a chance to go to school where, one day he observes that the headlight on his science teacher’s bicycle glows when he pedals. There he discovers about dynamo that is attached to the bike. He then studies about harnessing Wind energy in the library and this happens when he was expelled from school for non payment of fees.

When famine comes by, he uses this idea to build a windmill using scrap materials, like the radiator fan, a dead battery of an old car and a pump. The windmill so built, charges the battery which in turn powers the pump to pump water from the well.

A key takeaway in this is – there is gold in scrap, provided you know what to do with it! An important lesson in this age of use-and-throw.