68 pages • 2 hours read
William KamkwambaThe Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 3 - 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
When William’s uncle, John, falls ill with tuberculosis, the family is concerned. He’s been feeling increasingly sick but has refused to see a doctor. The family is shocked when he perishes from the disease, and William describes the funeral as “the loneliest feeling I’d ever felt” (52). Trywell finishes the growing and harvest seasons on John’s farm, and then hands it over to John’s eldest son, Jeremiah, who wastes the profits from the farm so that when it’s time to hire workers and plant crops, there’s not enough money to go around.
A year later, William’s other uncle, Socrates, brings his family, which includes seven daughters, to live on the Kamkwamba farm. He also brings his dog, Khamba, who, much to William’s disgust, begins to follow him everywhere. William grows to like Khamba’s company, and he brings the dog to hunt birds with Geoffrey and his other cousin, Charity. Charity is blinded by sap from an nkhaze tree, which can only be cleaned from his eyes with breastmilk. William’s mother had just given birth, so she agrees to help if Charity will pay her with all the birds he catches in the next hour—she is rewarded with four birds.
When William goes hunting alone with Khamba, he catches several birds and brings them to Charity and the other boys at a clubhouse Charity created. He hopes that by giving them the birds, they will accept him into their midst. Unfortunately, they simply take the birds and send him on his way.
Chapter 4 Summary
It’s the year 2000, and William is growing up. He’s thirteen and his interests and hobbies are changing. He spends less time with Khamba and more time in activities like taking apart radios with Geoffrey. The two of them practice so much that soon they’re knowledgeable enough to start their own radio repair business.
However, there they face a challenge in the lack of electricity in the village. In order to get the radios working, William learns how to harness the electricity from batteries, and harvests discarded batteries to draw what he needs. Despite this side business, and William’s blossoming love for science, he still has to help out on the farm. Because the other children in his house are all girls, they help in the house, but he is needed in the fields.
He’s not unhappy farming, and goes into detail about how to prepare the ground and the joy that comes from a good harvest. However, that year, the harvest is poor. Not only is there a lack of government support from the changing regime, but the weather is also poor for farming.
Chapter 5 Summary
William learns about bicycle dynamos, which can generate electricity. He’d seen them before, but noticed that his father’s friend powered a lamp on his bicycle with one. He starts stopping everyone he sees with a dynamo on their bike to ask how it works. While playing with one of them, he notices a loose wire, which generates a spark when it touches the bike’s handlebars. He and Geoffrey experiment and find that the dynamo can power a radio. At school, William and Gilbert take exams to enter secondary school.
Meanwhile, farmers are struggling. There’s not enough food to go around, and people are making drastic sacrifices—like skipping an entire meal every day—just to make what food they have last a bit longer. Even Khamba is getting thin, though this is due in part to his old age. He can’t catch mice like he used to, and William notices that he is getting slower too.
The government provides no help to the villagers of Malawi. President Muluzi travels around Malawi, making promises he doesn’t bother to keep. When a local chieftain, Chief Wimbe, is invited to speak at one of Muluzi’s rallies, he asks the president to provide assistance to those people in need by preserving the nation’s food sources. When Wimbe later speaks out against Muluzi, he is beaten up and must seek treatment in secret lest he further anger the president.
William worries for the safety of the Malawian people when their own government not only fails to protect them, but attacks them.
Chapter 6 Summary
With food shortages worsening, Trywell decrees that the Kamkwamba family will eat only one meal each day. Their family experiences two new beginnings—a baby girl and a new business making and selling cakes. Their profits are split between providing for their family and reinvesting in the business, for example, buying supplies to make the cakes. It’s at this time that William’s older sister Annie decides to elope, provoking Trywell’s anger. After he calms down, he sends William to the food distributor. There, William is shocked by the desperation—sometimes violent—that he witnesses as people try to get more food. The distributors cheat William and he returns home. The situation there is equally grim; villagers are selling their belongings just so they can afford a meager amount of food.
With Christmas on the horizon, their bleak situation looks particularly grim. They won’t be able to feast this year. William goes in search of meat, but finds none at Geoffrey’s house. Instead, he finds Geoffrey is sick—he’s suffering from anemia. He goes to Gilbert’s next, without success. His final stop is the clubhouse, where he finds Charity, who is just as desperate for meat as he is. They manage to get a goatskin from the market, and return to the clubhouse to cook it. It’s tough to eat, but they have a few mouthfuls and give some to Khamba. Though they have some left, they don’t share it because they believe that anything that happens in the clubhouse stays there.
Chapter 3 - 6 Analysis
William experiences failure on two fronts that would otherwise define his existence. Most in his position would grow up to work or run a farm, and to supplement the food he grows by hunting. More than once, William stresses that he is the only son in his family. He is surrounded by girls. After his Uncle John passes, the reader learns that inheritance of farmland and other assets passes from father to the eldest—or in his Uncle John’s case, only—son. When his cousin inherits the farm, William’s family’s fortunes change.
When William tries to hunt, he is successful but it doesn’t please him because that success does not earn him recognition among his peers; Charity and the other boys don’t invite him to stay at the clubhouse after he gives them the birds. When William tries to farm, he misses out on the joy of harvest. While both the weather and the government are outside of his control, he doesn’t derive as much pleasure from these activities as he does from repairing radios. William discovers his passion for and capability in the sciences.
Chapters five and six increase the stakes for William and for Malawi more generally. People are suffering—they’re hungry and unable to ward off illness because their hunger makes them weaker. They begin selling their possessions just to buy food. At the same time, William increases his knowledge about harnessing electricity. The bicycle dynamo is especially important because, where before he was simply harvesting the energy remaining in old batteries, he is now learning how to generate electricity.
William also learns that the Malawians cannot rely on their government for assistance. They’re going to have to find a way to solve their problems themselves, or they’ll perish. William worries for all of the people in his village, yet there are times when he is self-serving. For example, even though money and resources are scarce, he wants to go to secondary school. He has difficulty getting up at four in the morning and doesn’t want to learn to sow the fields properly. When Christmas comes, he and Charity manage to cook some food—difficult as it is to eat—but they don’t share it with other villagers. He has finally been welcomed into the clubhouse and is unwilling to break the rule that anything that happens there remains there.
