This week we have a work experience pupil working with us at Real Africa , so we thought we’d let Charlie write our blog and see what African issues have caught his eye. We think you’ll agree, he’s done a great job.
After watching comic relief on television last Friday and seeing the tough lives children in Africa have to live and also seeing what projects different people are doing to try and help the children in Africa , I decide to look at what the younger generation of Africa were doing to try and help themselves. I found many astonishing stories of children creating things to help them and there people such as generators and windmills. Here are just four of the many stories’ I found.
A young boy called Turere, just aged 11 who is from Kenya, living on the edge of Nairobi national park hated lions, he was part of a Maasai tribe who’s main task to be named as a warrior was to hunt and kill a lion. When he was just nine he was given the responsibility of safeguarding his family’s cattle. But every night lions would come and eat their cattle. Turere said “I grew up hating lions very much; they used to come at night and feed on our cattle whilst we were sleeping”. So at the age of 11, Turere decided he needed to find a way of protecting his cattle and keeping the lions away.
One day when he was walking with his cattle he realised that lions were scared of moving light as he had a torch in his hand. He realised that they wouldn’t go near the farm if there was a moving light in it. So he put his young clever mind to work and soon he had come up with a astonishing invention with a simple and low cost system to keep the predators away. He put together some flashing LED bulbs and some poles and put one on each corner of the cattle enclosure facing outwards toward were the lions arrived and then wired the lights to a box of switches and a car battery. This made the lions believe someone was there moving about and it worked. Since Turere rigged up his now named “lion lights” his family have not lost any livestock, to the great delight of his family and neighbours.
Another amazing story is about a boy names Kelvin Doe who lives in Sierra Leone and despite the conflict and violence there he still managed to invent things that have changed his family and neighbours lives. At the age of 16 he built his won battery out of only 3 things, acid, soda and metal parts scavenged from trash bins which now lights up all the homes in the area. This is not the only invention he has made he has also created a homemade radio for his village that he runs as a community station. He said “normally people call me do focus because I believe if you focus you can do.
The third story is about a self-taught teenager called William Kamkwamba. At the age of 14 William was forced out of school because his family could not keep paying the fees. When he returned back home to his family’s farmland he felt as if his life was now limited. But this is not a tale of Williams’s potential threatened by poverty. He had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village and he was not going to what for politicians or aid groups to come and do it for him. As he was forced out of school and could not go back he self-educated himself by used the local library. One day he picked up a tattered old textbook and saw a picture of a windmill, this was his inspiration. He said “I was very fascinated when I saw that a windmill could provide electricity and pump water, maybe I should make myself one”. But his ingenious plan could looked down upon by his community of about 200 people. But this still didn’t stop him from doing it. The finished product was a 5 metre tall blue gum tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala. But his community’s mirth turned in to amazement when he climbed up the windmill and plugged in a light bulb which started to flicker as the wind turned the blades. Soon William was pumping electricity in to his family’s mud brick compound.
And the last story I’m going to tell you is about 4 young girls who created a generator powered by urine, now it is disgusting but it is also clever and it works. Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen. The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder then The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas. This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator and just one litre of urine can provide 6 whole hours of electricity. This amazing invention has got many scientists talking and there work should not go unnoticed.
All these inventions have been made by African children without the aid of others it just shows that the young African generation is not just sitting there doing nothing and waiting for aid. They are out there doing things for themselves and people to try and make life better for them.