William Kamkwamba

Inventor

1987-08-05

Quotes by William Kamkwamba

• It was common for my father to sit my sisters down and tell them things like, I saw a girl working in the bank in town, and she was a girl just like you. My parents had never completed primary school. They couldn't speak English or even read that well. My parents only knew the language of numbers, buying and selling, but they wanted more for their kids. That's why my father had scraped the money together and kept Annie in school, despite the famine and other troubles.

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• Although Geoffrey, Gilbert and I grew up in this small place in Africa, we did many of the same things children do all over the world, only with slightly different materials. And talking with friends I've met from America and Europe, I now know this is true. Children everywhere have similar ways of entertaining themselves. If you look at it this way, the world isn't so big.

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• Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly, I said. So why won't the radio play?I don't know, he said. Try connecting them here.He was pointing toward a socket on the radio labeled AC, and when I shoved the wires inside, the radio came to life. We shouted with excitement. As I pedaled the bicycle, I could hear the great Billy Kaunda playing his happy music on Radio Two, and that made Geoffrey start to dance.Keep pedaling, he said. That's it, just keep pedaling.Hey, I want to dance, too.You'll have to wait your turn.Without realizing it, I'd just discovered the difference between alternating and direct current. Of course, I wouldn't know what this meant until much later.After a few minutes of pedaling this upside-down bike by hand, my arm grew tired and the radio slowly died. So I began thinking, What can do the pedaling for us so Geoffrey and I can dance?

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• Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly, I said. So why won't the radio play?I don't know, he said. Try connecting them here.He was pointing toward a socket on the radio labeled AC, and when I shoved the wires inside, the radio came to life. We shouted with excitement. As I pedaled the bicycle, I could hear the great Billy Kaunda playing his happy music on Radio Two, and that made Geoffrey start to dance.Keep pedaling, he said. That's it, just keep pedaling.Hey, I want to dance, too.You'll have to wait your turn.Without realizing it, I'd just discovered the difference between alternating and direct current. Of course, I wouldn't know what this meant until much later.After a few minutes of pedaling this upside-down bike by hand, my arm grew tired and the radio slowly died. So I began thinking, What can do the pedaling for us so Geoffrey and I can dance?

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• It was common for my father to sit my sisters down and tell them things like, I saw a girl working in the bank in town, and she was a girl just like you. My parents had never completed primary school. They couldn't speak English or even read that well. My parents only knew the language of numbers, buying and selling, but they wanted more for their kids. That's why my father had scraped the money together and kept Annie in school, despite the famine and other troubles.

  Read quote

• Although Geoffrey, Gilbert and I grew up in this small place in Africa, we did many of the same things children do all over the world, only with slightly different materials. And talking with friends I've met from America and Europe, I now know this is true. Children everywhere have similar ways of entertaining themselves. If you look at it this way, the world isn't so big.

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• Me and my cousin, most of the time we worked on radios and fixed them. I guess we started because I was curious to understand how radios work. When I was little, I used to think there were small people inside. Most of the time, I was just trying to see the people who are speaking in the radio.

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