They called him misala, "the fool". Because while his village faced hunger, William Kamkwamba built a tower with scraps, bicycle pieces and recovered materials.
She was just 14.
In 2001, Malawi was hit by a serious famine. William's family couldn't support school expenses and he had to leave school.
But quit attending classes didn't mean to stop learning.
William continued to go to the small library of the village. It was there that he found a book: Using Energy. On the cover there was the image of a windmill.
His knowledge of English was not good enough to allow him to easily understand the whole text. So he began studying mainly through drawings and patterns.
And from those figures came an idea that, in the eyes of others, seemed absurd: to build a windmill.
He didn't have a lab. He didn't have any new materials. He didn't even have traditional technical training.
He used eucalyptus poles, an old broken bicycle, a tractor fan blade, molded PVC tubes after heating them on the fire and recovered components from a landfill.
The neighbors saw him climb on that strange construction and thought he lost his head. From here that nickname: misala, «pazzo».
Then the blades began to turn.
The system operated a dynamo and produced enough electricity to light the lights and power a radio in the house of his family.
At that point, that tower built with recovery materials didn't seem like a boy's extravagance anymore.
William continued.
He built a larger plant to pump water destined for irrigation, a pump powered by solar energy for drinking water and even a system through which the inhabitants of the area could recharge their phones.
His story came out of the borders of the village. The journalists arrived, then invited them to tell their experience in international contexts. Finally, he was able to resume the course of studies that poverty had temporarily interrupted, until he studied at Dartmouth College.
This is the detail that makes the story of William Kamkwamba so powerful.
His first mill was not born in a university and not even in an equipped workshop. He was born during a famine, after a boy had been forced to leave school.
He had a library book, drawings trying to decipher and materials that for almost everyone else were just scrapped.
In the village they called him crazy.
He, meanwhile, was learning to turn the wind into electricity.