On William Kamkwamba’s Windmill Blog, he describes himself as “a secondary school student in Malawi who is interested in wind and solar energy, irrigation pumps and anything mechanical or electrical.” He’s using his blog to document his ongoing project to bring electricity to his village. In the first post to the blog, he wrote:

Our family is poor like many families in Malawi and Africa, and as a result, we have no electricity in our village or my home. For many years we had only paraffin candles to light my home at night. They are expensive, smoky, smelly and have to be purchased about 8 km from home.

During that time I decided to try to get as much education as possible by reading as many books as I could find. An organization called the Malawian Teacher Training Activity (MTTA), a project of USAID contributed a large quantity of books to the primary school library near my home. I read many of them. One of the books I read was called Using Energy, a primary school textbook about how energy is made. Inside the book there were plans for a windmill. I decided to build a windmill to provide power for my family.

William Kamkwamba’s Windmill Blog. – Link [Thanks, Michael!]

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