Very recently a wonderful Noongar friend said to me: 'it's not culture that will save our people, it's education'. Having been an Aboriginal Art lecturer for 4 years now I have to say that I absolutely agree with her. This evening a piece of random ABC journalism about a young man in Africa demonstrated just why. It inspired me so much I had to share it.
William Kamkwamba had to drop out of school because his parents could not afford the minimal fees. But he had a passion for science and engineering, he wanted to learn so much he decided to educate himself. He went to the local school library every day. One of the books he checked out explained how to build a windmill to generate electricity and pump water.
At age 14, amidst poverty and famine, this Malawian boy built a windmill to power his family's home and irrigate vegetables. He had to scrounge the bits to make it, the footage showed him cutting, heating and flattening PVC pipe to make the blades. He wired these to bamboo sticks, built a rickety 12 meter tower from gum saplings, mounted an old bike upside down at the top and finished it with a few more bits. One evening William climbed the structure with a bulb in one hand to try it out.
'He.... told me that he did not know if his windmill would actually work....a lot of his family and friends thought that he was absolutely crazy....However, when the wind began to turn the rotor blades and the improvised windmill started to generate enough electricity to power the light bulbs and the radios, everyone realized that William had managed to create something they had never dreamed was possible'.
William's story does not end with his windmill….he was invited to speak at the prestigious TED Global Conference. From there, he was introduced to computers, the internet, google, and blogging. He is now studying to become an electrical engineer, taking 10 courses to make up for lost time.
