Environmental issues addressed in The Boy who harnessed the wind

Environmental issues addressed in The Boy who harnessed the wind.
Facing life squarely and courageously is the only energy and strength that any individual who covets success and resilience in life should poses. From “The Boy who harnessed the wind” it is remarkable that any person is capable of inspiring many to take their future into their own hands. It was through unending determination and focus that helped Kamkwamba to defeat all the odds in his life from being a mere impoverished child with little education to becoming an object of inspiration the world over. The hunger, drought and famine were the order of the day in the village from which this young brilliant, ingenious, and inventive Kamkwamba came from. The book is an exquisite tale that strips life to its barest essentials from which one can find reason for hopes and dreams that when followed determinedly success is the only option. Despite being frustrated by lack of school fees, poverty and hunger Kamkwamba displays to us that being human is a constant striving for the possible and the wonderful. Indeed Kamkwamba is an alchemist who transformed the misfortune into an opportunity beyond his own (Kamkwamba et al. 2010, 89). This paper seeks to identify and discuss the environmental issues addressed in “The boy who harnessed the wind” by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer.
William Kamkwamba was fascinated about bringing wind energy into his village and his native country; Malawi especially after intensive reading of materials about energy. “Using Energy” is the book that inspired him most particularly the cover- page that hade long rows of windmills. Regardless of not knowing what they were he was intrigued to read and learn more from the book. With this urge he acquire knowledge and skills that nurtured his creativity and ingenuity to construct a windmill using sheer scrape metals and other crude materials available. Pure innovation is all that the book is about, hard work and persistence in any course of life always results into triumph. With scanty education, an impoverished Kamkwamba uses scrape materials that at times are regarded as pollutants to the environment to accomplish a miracle with unstoppable enthusiasm (Kamkwamba et al. 2010, 79).
His quest to light up his home and the surrounding environs propelled him to construct a windmill in his home village as a way of improving the devastating living conditions and thus improving the quality of life in Malawi at large. He envisioned that a windmill is capable of performing diverse duties like lighting up the village, pumping water, and irrigating the ever dry lands in Malawi. Given the fact that the country had just come out of hunger and drought the idea to irrigate farms was so incredible and necessary in order to alleviate the situation. The second windmill was a real power, together with a water-pump it was capable of pumping water to greater heights and distances battling the drought. Irrigating lands...