English, 24.09.2020 22:01 s9227575

After reading, "Malawi Windmill Boy with Big Fans," write the main idea sentence for each of the four sections of the article: Defense against Hunger

Shocks

Electric Wind

Cheetah Generation

The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over. His against-all-odds achievements are all the more remarkable considering he was forced to quit school aged 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80-a-year (£50) fees. When he returned to his parents' small plot of farmland in the central Malawian village of Masitala, his future seemed limited. But this was not another tale of African potential thwarted by poverty. Defense against hunger teenager had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village. And he was not prepared to wait for politicians or aid groups to do it for him. The need for action was even greater in 2002 following one of Malawi's worst droughts, which killed thousands of people and left his family on the brink of starvation. Unable to attend school, he kept up his education by using a local library. Fascinated by science, his life changed one day when he picked up a tattered textbook and saw a picture of a windmill. Mr. Kamkwamba told the BBC News website: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water."I thought: 'That could be a defense against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself'."When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings. But his ingenious project met blank looks in his community of about 200 people."Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy," he recalls. "They had never seen a windmill before.

ShocksNeighbours were further perplexed at the youngster spending so much time scouring rubbish tips."People thought I was smoking marijuana," he said. "So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].' Then they said: 'Ah, I see.'"Mr. Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade, and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire.

"I got a few electric shocks climbing that [windmill]," says Mr. Kamkwamba, ruefully recalling his months of painstaking work. The finished product - a 5-m (16-ft) tall blue-gum-tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala - seemed little more than a quixotic tinkerer's folly. But his neighbors' mirth turned to amazement when Mr. Kamkwamba scrambled up the windmill and hooked a car light bulb to the turbine. As the blades began to spin in the breeze, the bulb flickered to life and a crowd of astonished onlookers went wild. Soon the whiz kid's 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family's mud-brick compound. 'Electric wind'Out went the paraffin lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber. Before long, locals were queuing up to charge their mobile phones. Mr. Kamkwamba's story was sent hurtling through the blogosphere when a reporter from the Daily Times newspaper in Blantyre wrote an article about him in November 2006. Meanwhile, he installed a solar-powered mechanical pump, donated by well-wishers, above a borehole, adding water storage tanks and bringing the first potable water source to the entire region around his village. He upgraded his original windmill to 48-volts and anchored it in concrete after its wooden base was chewed away by termites. Then he built a new windmill, dubbed the Green Machine, which turned a water pump to irrigate his family's field. Before long, visitors were traipsing from miles around to gawp at the boy prodigy's magnets a mphepo - "electric wind".As the fame of his renewable energy projects grew, he was invited in mid-2007 to the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference in Arusha, Tanzania.

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