The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Chapters 8–10

The dog and I then walked outside toward the Dowa Highlands, which seemed forever draped in turmoil.

I split the backsides and laid the birds’ breasts directly on the coals and heard the meat begin to sizzle. Soon the smell of roasting flesh was all around me, encompassing the entire universe.

Almost as an afterthought, Khamba picked himself up and ate.

He stumbled to his feet, shook once to get the flies off his back, and hobbled toward me.

When I got the courage to turn around, I saw my dog lying in the tall, bent grass. His ribs jutted out his sides. He was panting, weak.

We were all losing weight. The bones began to show in my chest, and the rope I’d used as a belt no longer sufficed.

Now I’d started pinching my two belt loops together, then tying them off with a stick, much like a tourniquet, which I could simply twist when I became any thinner.

Men were the ones going out foraging, and in turn, burning precious energy that couldn’t be restored.

Around mid-February, the tobacco was finally ready to prune, and my father needed me and Geoffrey to help.

In our delirium, the rows of drying tobacco began to look like delicious food.

We smiled and stroked the leaves like swaddled babes, enjoying the soft music they created together in the breeze.

Theft was rampant, and while my uncle waited outside Mchinji for his few kilos, he heard a great commotion on the outskirts of the village and rushed over to see.

I pulled the cob off the fire, so hot it scalded my fingers. I then peeled back the steaming husks and began to eat. The kernels were meaty and warm and filled with the essence of God.

I remembered a parable that Jesus told the disciples, the one about the sower of seeds.

I remembered a parable that Jesus told the disciples, the one about the sower of seeds.

The same people who’d wandered weak and feeble now headed home carrying children on their backs and great bundles on their heads.

Each morning we walked the road that bordered our field and found it littered with green leaves and dowe gnawed to the pith, as if a battalion had feasted all night.

But as the dowe and pumpkins became ready, and the district slowly reclaimed its energy, students began returning to school and classes resumed.

For the next three weeks, I began a rigorous course in independent study, visiting the library in the mornings, and spending the afternoons reading in the shade.

The only problem was the dambo was just a soggy bog the rest of the year, and even in the rainy season, I’d have to run very long wires to my house to enjoy my music.

I knew about magnets because they were used to make the speakers in radios. I’d busted off a few and taken them to school as toys, moving little slivers of metal around through a piece of paper.

This is called electromagnetic induction, and it produces alternating current, or AC, since the direction of the current is changing.

In the video show one day, the only television working was a black-and-white one, and some patrons were getting upset.

“Imagine that hostile forces have invaded your town, and defeat seems certain. If you needed a hero to ‘save the day,’ it’s unlikely you would go to the nearest university and drag a scientist to the battlefront. Yet, according to legend, it was not a general who saved the Greek city of Syracuse when the Roman fleet attacked it in 214 B.C.”

But most important, a windmill could also rotate a pump for water and irrigation.

I stoked the fire in my mother’s kitchen, getting it very hot, then held the pipe over the coals. Soon it began to warp and blacken, becoming soft and easy to bend, like wet banana leaves.

The success of this model gave me the inspiration to go bigger.

Now that I had an actual purpose and a plan, I realized how much bounty lay before me. There were so many things: old water pumps, tractor rims half the size of my body, filters, hoses, pipes, and plows.

My careful work paid off. It was in pristine condition.

“Where is Joseph, from Form Two?” I asked some people at recess. “Light complexion, short hair? I admired that guy.”

Gilbert would meet me on the road and we’d joke about my cunning tricks.

By the time the last trader left pushing a bicycle laden with our tobacco, only one sixty-five-kilogram bale was left hanging under the shelter.

I had no time to wallow and grieve.

Using my screwdriver, I pried it open and discovered loads of fresh black engine grease.

As I planned my windmill, I pored through chapters in Explaining Physics about electricity and how it moves and behaves and how it can be harnessed.

The engine didn’t sound right, so I gave it to them straight: “Looks like you’ll need an overhaul. I know, I know, it’s expensive, but it’s life.”

These students immediately told their parents about the crazy boy in the scrapyard, and soon my mother was getting an earful in the trading center.

I didn’t have the right gauge of insulated wire to use for my electromagnetic coils.

Anyway, when I reached where they’d been standing, I looked down and saw a perfectly good motor, stripped of its wires, lying there like one of those poached elephants without its tusks.

However, by this point I’d stopped being bashful. I ran over to the guy and asked if I could see his bike.