The Boy Who Harnesed The Wind

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

Directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor

Genre-Drama

Watched on the 19/9/2020

PARAGRAPH 1 Based on the true story of William Kamkwamba who was a 13yo boy who lived in the village of Wimbe in Malawi in a time of political unrest and famine. Here he lives a poor life where his family cannot afford his schooling fees and their only source of food is from their crops that they grow which are very dependent on the weather which lately has not been too good.

PARAGRAPH 2  A character that i found interesting was William Kamkwamba i found him interesting because he had very little schooling and he still managed to devise a way to make a windmill to make electricity to power a pump. he found all the part he needed from a dump which he used to pump the water so they could plant their crops any season they wanted. This was interesting to me because in a 1st world country where people get good education kids his age would probably not have been able to think of that. But a 13yo boy in  a 3rd world country was able to figure out how to build a windmill from scratch with only 1 small picture book to help him. He didn’t have a hardware store to buy any supplies he had to scavenge in a junkyard to find the materials he needed “So many things around you are usable. Where others see garbage, I see opportunity”.

PARAGRAPH 3 Never lose focus of your goals and don’t give up.  Everything was against William, he wasn’t able to go to school and get a proper education, and his family was very poor, there was no money to pay for any of the supplies he needed.   But he didn’t let any of this get in his way, he believed in his goal (quote I can bring water), he also continued to persevere with his goal even when his father was against him and would let him use his bike for parts, his fater even saying “Get this stuidness away from me” I can relate to this because this year for music I was learning Moonlight Sonata on the piano, this was not easy because I have had no experience in playing the piano before this year, and I cannot read sheet music so I had to memorise the entire 7 minute song.  There were times I felt like giving up, but I  persevered and managed to learn the whole song.  

PARAGRAPH 4  Some challenges that the characters had to deal with were Hunger  and getting a Education. The characters dealt with these were difficult for the characters because without food they would not be able to eat, “We can only have one meal a day. We should decide which one.” This quote shows how they were so low on food that they could only have one meal a day because of the flooding and droughts. Another challenge that they had to overcome was getting a sufficient education. Only those who could afford it could go to school, which wasn’t that many people since they were struggling to buy food. I have been to Africa and seen our neighbours struggling to have enough to eat, most of their diet consisted of rice and bojobe, which is a thick porridge like food made from maize. We were able to help them while we lived there, but now that we are all back in NZ there is no way that we can support them, I wonder now how they are getting on now.  

PARAGRAPH 5 The title of the text is appropriate because it gives you an idea about what the movie is going to be about. But it does leave you wondering how a boy harnessed the wind and why he would need to and want to do it.

PARAGRAPH 6 I would recommend this movie to people of ages 10+ because it has some scenes of people getting beaten but these are not directly shown. There are also parts of the movie that are in African with English subtitles so younger viewers may struggle to understand this as they would not know what’s going on. But I think it’s a good movie for young people to watch so that they could get a better understanding of what living in a 3rd world country would be like and maybe help them to appreciate what they have.