This is the story of William, a boy from Malawi, one of Africa's poorest nations. When he was 14 years old, William couldn't afford going to school; so instead he made trips to the local library. In one of his trips, he found a US textbook that detailed the marvels of electricity and featured a cover with a long row of towering windmills. William thought that he could build one so that he could produce enough energy to light a bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset.

So he went on and build it, out of strips of PVC pipe, rusty car and bicycle parts and blue gum trees... and then he went on and build more windmills, to generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use... and he is still building windmills...