The Daily Show

I sometimes forget how much I love "The Daily Show." I'm not really the type of person who is watching TV at 10:00 at night, so I hardly ever catch Jon Stewart's show. But I did last night. One of his guests was William Kamkwamba, a whiz kid from Malawi. He built a windmill when he was 14 years old from a diagram in a book, using spare bicycle and tractor parts. He's pretty big news right now, he has written a book, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," is working on a documentary film, and has been interviewed by many magazines and newspapers and so forth.

This sort of story inspires me so much. I sometimes get caught up in the trappings of modern conveniences and the comfort that a nice salary provides. I am currently browsing the job market in Japan and getting excited about actually making some money instead of taking out endless student loans. I'm excited about paying off my debt and being able to put some saving away for the future.

But this sort of story reminds me that I didn't start out wanting to teach priviliged children studying English so they could make it into the best colleges so they could be a lawyer. I started out wanting to teach children so they could lead fulfilling lives, make the world a better place, and learn the skills to pull themselves, their family, and their community out of poverty, just like William Kamkwamba did.

This is his website:

http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/

And this is a link to the clip of the Jon Stewart Interview:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/william-kamkwamba


P.S.
For some reason it wouldn't upload so I could just put the clip here. I would like to have the clip ON the post, but there was an error. It said, Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is broken and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Any computer nerds out there who can offer support I'd be grateful.