The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - Chiwetel Ejiofor

 

Chiwetel Ejiofor is a celebrated actor and director, who won fame through the films, 'Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and '12 Years a Slave (2013).  The boy who harnessed the wind (2019) is a cinematic adaptation of the memoir of the same name authored by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer.  Ejiofor directed it and acted in it. It visualizes how a fourteen year old boy used his knowledge from a local library to build  a windmill  and brought electricity  and water irrigation to his village. It was how Malawi survived the severe 2001 famine.

William Kamkwamba had great interest in electronics and spent much of his free time in the local junkyard, searching for usable electronic components.  Though he discontinued his schooling, his science teacher Mr. Kachigunda allowed him to use the library. Actually he was in love with William's sister.  When William's sister Annie eloped with Kachigunda, William got the bicycle of Kachigunda.  That cycle became an inevitable one to design the Windmill later.  However, William designed a prototype of a wind mill capable of powering a water pump to irrigate crops.  All including his father supported him then.  He constructed a full scale windmill with the components of his bicycle.  The machine successfully enabled the cultivation of crops.  Thus, William's self taught knowledge and resilience found an apt and timely solution to the environmental and economical crisis of William Kamkwamb's village, Wimbe in Malawi.

----Thulasidharan V