Friday, July 06, 2007

William's Windmill


Designed and built by William Kamkwamba, a high school dropout and genius in Malawi. Please join me in donating the cost of a cup of coffee today so William can finish his admirable project.

(via Tim Worstall)

5 comments:

Eli Blake said...

I'll donate the price of a cup of coffee, if you tell me where to send it.

To be honest, I go every month to a community near my home (the community is Birdsprings, Arizona) out on the reservation, where dozens of homes don't even have windmills or electricity (let alone a hookup for the electric grid) or running water (yes, this is the U.S.A., but there are still entire communities of people here today who go to the outhouse in the dark and the kids have to do their homework by oil lamp (and that is literal-- some of the kids in Birdsprings ride the bus to Flagstaff, and they get on it at 6 A.M. before the sun comes up in the winter, and get home about 6 P.M., after it goes down.)

I've told people about how poor a community Birdsprings is, in fact I even blogged on it on the occasion of a funeral for a young man who died in Iraq (that post is linked here) and been accused of exaggerating, with people actually telling me that no one in America lives like that (not by local people though-- most people here have been to the reservation and they know better.)

AmPowerBlog said...

Hi Internet Ronin: Thought I'd come by and say thanks for visiting my page and commenting. Have a great day!

Randy said...

That's great Eli! William has a paypal "Make a Donation" button on the right side of his weblog. Touching story about Birdsprings. As I understand it, in California, the tribes operating casinos are doing a great job of sharing the wealth with neighboring less fortunate tribes. Any chance of something similar going on in Arizona?

Randy said...

Hi Don! Thanks for stopping by. Drop in any time.

Eli Blake said...

Thanks.

Unfortunately the Navajos aren't in that situation. They are much larger than any other tribe in the state (in fact they are the largest tribe in the country.) Because the Navajo reservation is so large and so remote, they have not been able to run a casino on the reservation proper (pretty much any place they put it, it would be a given that about half or more of their patrons would be Navajos, and they don't want to rob their own people.) They are building one in To'hajiilee (a detached piece of the reservation miles away from the rest of it, and along a stretch of I-40 near Albuquerque) but again, because the Navajo reservation is so large, it is not likely that the revenue from one casino will make much of a difference.