The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

The maize country of central Malawi, where the Kasungu plateau rolls east from the district town toward the trading centre of Wimbe. Through the 2001-02 famine a teenager on his family's farm teaches himself from library books and builds a windmill out of scrap, turning wind into light and water. The map runs from the farm and the little school at Wimbe out to the district town, and finally south to the capital.

William Kamkwamba

The family farm, Wimbe

The famine

The story begins on a smallholding where the family grows maize and tobacco on the Kasungu plateau. When the rains fail and the 2001-02 famine takes hold, the teenage narrator has to leave school because his parents can no longer pay the fees. Hunger on this farm is what sets everything that follows in motion.

Opening chapters

inferred Kamkwamba's account places his family's maize farm at Masitala, a hamlet within the Wimbe area east of Kasungu town. Masitala is not a separately mapped point, so this pins the farm at the verified village of Wimbe.

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