It started as a simple solution to a simple problem: 14 year old William Kamkwamba wanted to read at night.
Unfortunately, William lived in Malawi, and had no access to electricity to power a light bulb. So what did he do? He built a windmill.
That’s impressive enough for any 14 year old… but he did it using old pvc pipe, a collection of beer bottle caps, some rusty car parts and pieces of tree. And it worked.
One windmill became three, and William not only was able to read at night, but he was able to pump water out of the ground, saving he and his family from starving to death. He began to carve for himself a better life, using ingenuity and technology.
That was until his neighbours came by and demanded that he take the windmill down. It was in the midst of a nasty drought, and his neighbours, heavily superstitious at the best of times, had a very good reason for wanting the windmills taken down… they blamed his windmill witchcraft for blowing away the rain clouds.
It makes us shake our head. This was clearly a case of technology being used to better peoples lives, being scared away for no rational reason other than “this might be the reason and so therefore, in the interest of being prudent, we’ll remove the technology.” What we mock as being ridiculous is legitimate logic, according to William’s neighbours.
Thankfully, William persevered. His windmill has survived, his family has diversified their crops, and William can read at night. He has expanded his windmill network, and as a result, his little village of 60 houses now has clean drinking water and a better life.
Mull this over the next time someone says the precautionary principal is simply “being prudent.”
