Today, at our language class, we were told to start working on a guide about the movie we’ve recently watched. These are some of the answers I was able to answer today, since the activity will be continued next class.
- Harness means make use of (natural resources in this case) mainly, to produce energy.
- William Kamkwamba is a Malawian innovator, engineer and author who suffered from extreme living conditions and hunger as a kid. In spite of the poverty stricken area he and his family were living in, his parents made a huge effort to send him to.As an attempt to improve the village’s living conditions, he built a windmill which provided electricity to connect it to a water plump and provide water for his village.
- The area where William used to live was really poor, deteriorated, dessertic and the food an water were scarce. Besides, the area was pretty dry and it had been a quite long drought, which deteriorated the land the crops grew on, damaging the harvest, and therefore, people’s health since they couldn’t eat and were starving. Furthermore, most of the houses where bungalows and only the most privileged or the ones who got a scholarship were able to get a proper education.
- He harnessed the wind by creating a windmill which would provide electricity to apply a water pump and provide water to drink and grow crops. Among the materials he needed to crate the windmill, were blue gums trees, bicycle parts, a cheap dynamo and some things he found among the trash at the local scrapyard. He needed knowledge on engineering, mainly, which he pretty much learnt by reading books at the library once his parents weren’t able to afford the school any longer.
- Famine means extreme scarcity of food and starvation means suffering or death caused by scarcity of food. It is related to the movie since this is what William’s village suffered from since the land was deteriorated, what led to their crops not resulting in a good harvest, and therefore, no food for people, what led to many of them suffering or dying.
- This quote is related to Williams attitude since even though people didn’t always support him, he knew what he wanted, knew how to get it and was not afraid to go for it in order to save his family and neighbors. He knew that if he didn’t start working on a solution no one else would, and the whole village would starve to death.
- Writing Task
Young Boy Saves His Village
Last week, Malawi’s situation was absolutely changed by a young boy who built a windmill to provide electricity and water. He is said to have harnessed the wind.
William Kamkwamba, aged 13, was constantly seeing how people around him starved because there was a famine since the soil was deteriorated and nor food nor water could be obtained. Due to this issues, his family started earning less and less money since they worked in the farming industry (which was decaying drastically) and they couldn’t afford his school fees, so he had to drop out. As he was a really hard working child, who wanted to learn no matter how much it took him, he started going to the public library, where he read a book about engineering, which made him realize he wanted to be an engineer. However, he couldn’t just focus on what he wanted, he also had to take care of his surroundings. Therefore a great idea came to Williams mind: he would make an engendering work which consisted in building a wind turbine for his village in order to stop the provide water and therefore end such a disastrous famine.
After having that idea, he decided to go after the materials. He would need a dynamo, bicycle parts, blue gums trees’ parts and some other stuff he found at the scrapyard. After getting the materials he started working and, in spite of the difficulties faced at the moment of building the windmill, it was finally able to be built by the young boy. What the artifact does is provide power to water pump which would supply the village with water. Besides, it also provides electricity for the houses.
The windmill has been working for a week and Malawi’s population is enjoying food, water and electricity for the first time in months and some even in their whole life. The village’s mayor is already hiring more workers to do some more and even sell some to other villages which are in need as well. All in all, William Kamkwamba’s work was a complete success.
