Free The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba Page A

his face.
    “Hold still,” she said, and squeezed a stream of white milk into his eyes.
    It was hilarious. “Eh man,” Geoffrey shouted. “Don’t get any in your mouth!”
    “This is your payment for satisfying nkhuli,” I added, holding my ribs.
    I never asked Charity how he felt about that incident, but I suppose it didn’t matter. Within minutes, he was able to open his eyes and see. We all agreed that Maxwell must be some kind of wizard for knowing this secret. My mother told Charity, “For my services, I get all the birds you kill on your next hunt.”
    Charity agreed. The next day he brought four birds in a sugar sack and dropped them in the kitchen.
     
    H UNTING WITH MY COUSINS had taught me the ways of the land: how to find the best spots in the tall grass and along the shimmering dambo pools, how to outwit the birds with a strong, smart trap, and the virtues of patience and silence when lying in wait. Any good hunter knows that patience is the key to success, and Khamba seemed to understand this as if he’d been hunting his entire life.
    Our first outings began with the start of the rainy season, when the showers are heavy all morning and replaced in the afternoon by a sweltering, pasty air. When the land is wet and filled with puddles, the dambo s don’t attract as many birds. This is when we hunters rely on the chikhwapu, a giant deadly whip—or a kind of slingshot trap without the stone.
    After the rains stopped one morning, Khamba and I set out to make our trap. I carried a sack on the end of my hoe made from a mpango —a kind of long, brightly colored scarf used by women to hold everything from their hair to babies on their backs. The sack contained a long bicycle tube, a broken bicycle spoke, a short section of steel wire I’d clipped off my mother’s clothesline, a handful of maize chaff we called gaga, and four heavy bricks. As always, I also carried the two hunting knives I’d made myself.
    The first was a Rambo-style commando knife I’d made from thick iron sheets. First, I’d traced a fierce-looking pattern on the metal with a pencil. Using a nail and heavy wrench, I poked holes all along the lines, perforating the metal so it popped out with a good pounding. I then ground the metal against a flat rock to smooth the edges and produce a sharp blade. For a handle, I wrapped the bottom of the blade in enough plastic jumbo s to get a full, even grip. Then I melted the handle over a fire.
    My second knife was more like a stabbing tool made from a large nail I’d pounded flat with the wrench and ground to a sharp edge. I’d fashioned its handle in the same way as the first. I kept both knives tucked snugly in the waistband of my trousers.
    Packing my gear, I set off with Khamba down the trail behind Geoffrey’s house that led to the graveyard, down into the blue gums where the trees were taller and provided good shade. The hills of the Dowa Highlands—which separated us from the lake—rose beautifully before me, capped in gray, dripping thunderheads. A new storm was on its way, so we had to work quickly.

    The view of the Dowa Highlands from my home. The mountains lie just beyond the maize rows and blue gum forest where Khamba and I would hunt.
Photographs courtesy of Bryan Mealer
    I found a good spot off the main trail, near a tall blue gum that would cast a long shadow once the sun broke through the haze. Using my hoe, I cleared away the grass and vines until the red mud was exposed—a surface of about four feet in diameter. Taking my knife, I sawed off two thick branches from the blue gum and stripped their bark, then whittled both to sharp points. I pushed the poles into the moist soil about two feet apart, then pulled them to test their firmness. They held.
    I cut the bicycle tube into two thin strips and attached both pieces to the section of steel wire. I then tied the rubber strips to the blue gum poles. When finished, it resembled a giant slingshot with a thick steel center.