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AAM ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Saturday, November 14, 6:30 pm
GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER
149 Waubesa St. Madison
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It's not very different from being called "clean & articulate." How
can anyone refer to Africa as resourceless? As the home of ancient,
really ancient civilizations, they had to be innovative or we'd still
be dressing like the Flintstones.
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 15, 2009, at 3:53 PM, Collo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ********************************************************
>
> AAM ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
>
> Saturday, November 14, 6:30 pm
>
> GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER
>
> 149 Waubesa St. Madison
>
> http://www.africanassociation.org
>
> ********************************************************
>
> Dean,
>
> "Africans are so resourceless and so innovative"
>
> Could the author have had the meaning that Africans find ways to
> overcome their lack of resources?
> A good example being Mr Kamkwamba who was innovative enough to
> overcome the lack of resources in his immediate environment.
> Just some food for thought.
>
>
> ---- Aggo Akyea <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> =============
> ********************************************************
>
> AAM ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
>
> Saturday, November 14, 6:30 pm
>
> GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER
>
> 149 Waubesa St. Madison
>
> http://www.africanassociation.org
>
> ********************************************************
>
>
>
> LLLLLLLLLL OOOOOOOO LLLLLLLLLL
>
> Really loud, I must say.
>
> Thanks Dean, for this and you have put this so well that I cannot
> even begin to add to it. I suppose we all just lose ourselves and
> just stay with the SILENCE.
>
> Do you remember the joke that ends: “… … and when the American
> ambassador came to our country, we offered him the tallest tree.” F
> irst we forget to name our own country and just say Africa. And sec
> ondly, it is as though that solves all the issues of the wrong perce
> ptions of Africa when we ourselves are SILENT about telling folks th
> e true HUMAN stories.
>
> I remember eleven years ago when we put out the brochure and the
> program booklet for the first AFRICA FEST, it depicted a few rustic
> pictures of Africa among others. A friend from a country which will
> remain unnamed thought we should only show pictures of Africa of sky
> scrappers, paved highways and motor cars.
>
> Can people as in human beings be people as in human beings only
> through sky scrappers, paved highways and motor cars???
>
> Well, I’ll leave that for folks to decipher.
>
> Thanks again Dean. You made my day.
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Dean Makuluni <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 12:51:22 PM
> Subject: Re: (no subject)
>
> ********************************************************
> AAM ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
> Saturday, November 14, 6:30 pm
> GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER
> 149 Waubesa St. Madison
> http://www.africanassociation.org
> ********************************************************
> Not to dampen enthusiasm about the achievement of William Kamkwamba,
> but keeping in mind that silence is tantamount to acceptance of a
> particular portrait of Malawi (and yes, Africa), that is being
> advanced in connection with this story, I found the following
> zingers :
> "Only 2 percent of the population enjoys access to electricity. (As
> Kamkwamba writes: "Once the sun goes down, and if there's no moon,
> everyone stops what they're doing, brushes their teeth, and just
> goes to sleep)." [From the first paragraph in the section entitled
> "Surviving a Famine". The statement by Kamkwamba is quoted from the
> book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba and Bryan
> Mealer].
>
> Great. At least we "brush our teeth" before we go to bed. But
> really? No kerosene lamps? Not even a wood fire? No storytelling?
> Did Kamkwamba write this? Or did the collaborator on the
> autobiography say this?
> The second one is directly from Bryan Mealer, who is quoted thus:
> "Africans are so resourceless and so innovative" (from the section
> "Africans helping Africa").
> Is being "innovative" not being "resourceful"? Or is this about
> resources that can be carted away from the continent?
> As I said, I don't mean to dampen a good story. But I am struck at
> what we have to say about ourselves to advance this story as
> "remarkable."
> Dean
> --- On Tue, 10/13/09, Koudjo Nofodji <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>> From: Koudjo Nofodji <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: (no subject)
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2009, 9:01 PM
>>
>>
>> ********************************************************
>> AAM ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
>> Saturday, November 14, 6:30 pm
>> GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER
>> 149 Waubesa St. Madison
>> http://www.africanassociation.org
>> ********************************************************
>> Thanks for sharing, this story is really amazing and it makes me
>> believe that we can go far if we strive to succeed. E pluribus unum.
>> With a little scholarship William Kamkwamba can become the best
>> wind power africa ever had and he can help move africa into the
>> green revolution.
>>
>> Again, thanks for sharing.
>> "La raison pour laquelle la foudre ne frappe pas deux fois au meme
>> endroit est que generalement l' endroit n'existe plus pour une
>> seconde frappe" ~Willie Tyler
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> ________________________________
> From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Mon, October 12, 2009 11:07:25 PM
>> Subject: (no subject)
>>
>> ********************************************************
>> AAM ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
>> Saturday, November 14, 6:30 pm
>> GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER
>> 149 Waubesa St. Madison
>> http://www.africanassociation.org
>> ******************************************************** *** Send
>> email to the list: [log in to unmask] *** *** Access AAM list
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>> Oct 13th 2009 By Scott Indrisek
>> 14-Year-Old African Turns Garbage Into Wind Power
>> | More
>> * Highbrow
>> * Mantastic
>> * News
>> * Weird Science
>> 42 Comments Every now and then we come across a heartwarming story
>> that also makes us feel like indulgent, do-nothing slackers.
>> William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi (a country that most of us
>> geographically challenged Americans probably know as 'that place
>> where Madonna's adopted kid is from').
>>
>> He grew up in extreme poverty, living through famine and cholera
>> epidemics, lacking the money to pay even basic school fees. A spark
>> of scientific curiosity led Kamkwamba to the local library, where
>> he began to research dynamos and electromagnetism. (This was
>> despite the fact that the books were in English, a language he
>> didn't speak.)
>>
>> Then, like any normal adolescent would, he started collecting
>> scraps of garbage in the hopes of jerry-rigging a windmill in his
>> backyard. And guess what? The thing worked, Kamkwamba became world
>> famous -- maybe you caught him on "The Daily Show" this week -- and
>> now eco-warrior Al Gore is blurbing his best-selling memoir, "The
>> Boy Who Harnessed the Wind."
>>
>> We spoke with Kamkwamba and his co-writer, Bryan Mealer, about
>> garbage collecting, perseverance and why reporting on hope is a
>> whole lot more fun than covering war and bloodshed.
>>
>> Surviving a famine
>>
>> "The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind" describes Kamkwamba's upbringing
>> in rural Malawi, a country that often valued the influence of
>> "magic" over science. That's not surprising considering how
>> isolated from even the most basic modern technology people there
>> are. Only 2 percent of the population enjoys access to electricity.
>> (As Kamkwamba writes: "Once the sun goes down, and if there's no
>> moon, everyone stops what they're doing, brushes their teeth, and
>> just goes to sleep.") Villagers subsist on farming, and the
>> traditional foodstuff is a simple, corn-based concotion known as
>> nsima.
>>
>> Or they do, that is, until food shortages and famine send Malawi
>> into a full-blown crisis, which is what happened in 2002. The price
>> of corn skyrocketed, and the country's corrupt president refused
>> even to acknowledge that there was an emergency. Kamkwamba's family
>> survived thanks to luck and resourcefulness.
>>
>> "That famine was so completely terrible, his family almost didn't
>> make it," says Bryan Mealer, an AP reporter who co-wrote the memoir
>> with Kamkwamba. "His mother actually gave birth to a baby during
>> that time. She would nurse her kid at night, and her hand would
>> shake. They were eating one meal per day, three mouthfuls of food.
>> His dad went blind at one point because he was skipping his meals
>> so the kids could eat. It's such a devastating time. That was the
>> whole impetus and catalyst for the windmill."
>>
>> Sneaking into school
>>
>> Kamkwamba -- now 22 years old -- had always been fascinated by
>> simple devices and how they operated. His curiosity was first
>> piqued by the dynamo, a rudimentary device that uses friction
>> generated by a spinning bike wheel to power a lamp. Like many
>> children, radios also intrigued him, and he couldn't resist the
>> urge to take them apart as a youngster -- mainly to determine if
>> there were "people inside the radio" making all that noise.
>>
>> Kamkwamba's family, like many in his village, was desperately poor,
>> and unable to afford the fees levied by the local school. Rather
>> than playing hooky, Kamkwamba found himself in a unique position:
>> sneaking into class. He also depended on the local library --
>> funded by NGOs -- where he discovered English-language physics
>> books. By examining the diagrams and translating important
>> captions, Kamkwamba was able to give himself a crash-course in
>> science.
>>
>> "When he finally saw these books there was a diagram of a dynamo
>> and how it worked, and he was able to grasp the concept of
>> electromagnetism," Mealer explains. "He sees this other book with a
>> picture of the windmills on the cover. It all came together. He's
>> like, Oh, I can make one of these. He was 14."
>>
>> Scouring the scrapyard
>>
>> Faced with incredibly limited materials, Kamkwamba had to be as
>> inventive as Edison and resourceful as MacGyver. The design for his
>> windmill was cobbled together from a combination of PVC pipe, a
>> tractor fan and bicycle parts.
>>
>> "Over the next few weeks," he writes, "my scrap pieces kept
>> revealing themselves like a magic puzzle." Kamkwamba's peers and
>> elders watched on with curiosity and, occasionally, disdain. (His
>> own mother's reaction: "Only madmen collect garbage!")
>>
>> "I was encouraged by the picture which I saw on the [science]
>> book," Kamkwamba explained to Asylum. "I was saying to myself, 'It
>> means that somebody somewhere else built this thing. This thing
>> didn't fall from the sky.' I know that everything has a beginning.
>> When somebody's starting a new thing, there will be some
>> resistance. People will say, 'This [is] not going to work.' The
>> guys who made the airplane -- I also think that maybe when they
>> started, maybe people were also laughing. 'How can you make
>> something fly?'"
>>
>> Against all odds, Kamkwamba's garbage windmill worked. It powered
>> light bulbs in his family's home and later was able to charge cell
>> phones. The 14-year-old inventor didn't make his creation to
>> attract attention -- he did it to help the people he loved -- but
>> in due time local media caught on. Soon Malawian reporters paid a
>> visit. In 2007 Kamkwamba was invited to speak at the celebrated TED
>> conference; a Wall Street Journal profile followed.
>>
>> While his initial goal of using wind to power well pumps -- crucial
>> in rural Africa -- remained elusive, it was Kamkwamba's first
>> modest experiment with his windmill that would catapult him to
>> international fame ... and a foundation, Moving Windmills, that
>> would help him work toward his dream.
>>
>> The inventor meets the war reporter
>>
>> It was that Journal article that attracted the attention of AP
>> reporter Bryan Mealey, who'd spent nearly five years covering a
>> very different face of Africa: the ongoing war in the Democratic
>> Republic of Congo. "I felt like I was chronicling death all the
>> time," he says. "When you're a reporter in Africa a lot of people
>> ask you, 'Why do you always cover bad news?' It was a really good
>> question I never really had an answer for."
>>
>> Mealey and Kamkwamba spent a year together working on "The Boy Who
>> Harnessed the Wind." The experience seems to have recharged the
>> reporter, after the grueling time spent focused on carnage in the
>> Congo. "I think we fall into this trap, as conflict reporters -- we
>> cover these wars, rapes, massacres, but after a while we begin to
>> see the whole continent through that lens," Mealey explains.
>>
>> Africans helping Africa
>>
>> "William's just one guy in Malawi," Mealey mentions to the Web site
>> Afrigadget, which spotlights D.I.Y. innovation from the continent.
>> "How many guys like him are in South Africa, or Senegal, or Congo,
>> or Sudan? There must be thousands."
>>
>> "Africans are so resourceless and so innovative," he continued.
>> "People have dignity and they want to preserve their dignity. A man
>> just wants to go to work and support his family. We always talk
>> about [how] we want to save Africa, help Africa. Clearly it's not
>> working in these top-down models -- just throwing money at the
>> continent, throwing a bunch of subsidized grain, mosquito-net
>> drives or whatever the hell we do. If we want to change that place
>> we go in and find guys like William. We don't give him money, maybe
>> we just give him slivers of opportunity. Some kind of leg up.
>> People want to save themselves, and they want to do it themselves.
>> Africans are very resourceful. They've become so resourceful
>> because they've had nothing for so long. That continent is so ripe
>> for innovation and design."
>>
>> Kamkwamba is continuing his own good work, now under the auspices
>> of the Moving Windmills foundation. One goal is to produce
>> affordable, wind-power-generated machines that can pump well water
>> in rural areas. He's traveled to New York and marveled over the
>> subways and skyscrapers. "Before I came here the highest place I
>> had ever been was on top of my windmill," he says.
>>
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