A teenager from Malawi helped me figure out that curiosity, experimentation, perseverance, and a little misala – crazy – are at the core of each design engineer.
By Kim Ukura, Associate Editor, PD&D
When William Kamkwamba was 14-years-old, he had high hopes about returning to school in the fall. But a severe drought and famine in his country, Malawi, left his family unable to grow crops to sell and pay the fees for William to go back to school.
Instead of loafing around or feeling sorry for himself, William decided he wanted to keep up with his classmates. He spent many afternoons at his village’s small library, reading up on English, social studies, math, and physics. There he found the book Using Energy by Dr. Mary Atwater, which showed a diagram and explanation of how windmills worked.
William was inspired, and began digging around in a local scrap yard, looking for pieces to build is own windmill – PVC pipe, a bicycle frame, a tractor fan, and other discarded nuts and bolts. Despite being called crazy – misala – by others in the village, William continued to piece together the project with the help of a few close friends.
When the windmill was finished, William started it up and was able to provide consistent, renewable power to his family for the first time – something only a small percentage of the people in Malawi have access to.
In some ways, William’s story is a bit of old news. The hardcover edition of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – a memoir about William’s life co-authored by Bryan Mealer – came out last year, but I only read the book a few weeks ago. And William has been a small fixture on the national scene since 2007 when he was first recognized as a TED fellow at TEDGlobal 2007:
William returned to TED in 2009, where he gave a more polished presentation of his windmill project:
There’s also been a short film made about the windmill, and William collaborated with Tom Reilley (TED’s Community Director) to start the Moving Windmills Project, a non-profit working on Malawian-run rural economic development and education. Since 2008, donations have helped build wind and solar power for village homes; provided bedding and anti-malarial bed nets; improved sanitation with water wells; and distributed uniforms, books, and money for local education.
When I finished the book last weekend, I realized that William’s story connects well to what we’re doing at PD&D right now. We recently opened up voting on the 2010 Design Engineer Hall of Fame, where we ask readers to recognize their peers who embody “the spirit of the design engineer.”
As someone who’s just getting familiar with the engineering industry, I didn’t feel like I really knew what that meant.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind showed me that the spirit of a design engineer isn’t something that is taught; it’s an innate quality that a career in science or engineering can put to good use.
Even before building the windmill, William tinkered. He and his friends putzed around with batteries, wondered how cars worked, and asked questions about bicycle-powered lights. Despite teasing, William maintained a natural curiosity about the world and a respect for the scientific method.
Those factors helped him overcome the ridicule and peer pressure, to build his windmill, to imagine a life that was different from the one he had, and to grasp at opportunities when they came his way.
Despite a drastically different life path from most of the nominated engineers this year, William perfectly embodies the ideals of curiosity, experimentation, and perseverance that are part of the core of what it means to be a design engineer.
What does “the spirit of the design engineer” mean to you? What other examples would you share? Share your thoughts and stories below or e-mail kim.ukura@advantagemedia.com.