How do we inspire young people into technology?

My sister and her husband recently adopted three children of a deceased relative and brought them into their home at Lumbadzi. The oldest of the three, a boy called Bright,   about seven years old when he was adopted, proved to be a complex character. He would, for example, sell the exercise books or pens my sister bought for him to realise money for petty food items.

One day Bright did not show up after school. A man hunt for him did not yield anything as all of his friends said they had not seen him. The following morning a man brought him home saying he had found him among the boys that were cheering gule wamkulu the previous night.

Boys usually have a natural curiosity for things that appear to defy ordinary explanation. I was five years old when I first came across gule wamkulu. My father was then a pastor for Kongwe congregation in Dowa district. One day I ventured out of the manse (as the pastor’s residence is called in the CCAP) and before I went far I heard some strange groaning and screams. My eyes quickly landed on two legged characters in the distance; characters that did not look like anything I had seen before. They pointed at me and exclaimed unintelligible utterances, causing me to take flight, my heart having leapt into my mouth. I ran back into the manse and hid.

When I recovered from my fright I learnt that the characters were akapoli. Many questions raced through my small mind: Where did they come from? What were they up to? Would I have survived if they had caught me? How can I avoid them next time?

With the passage of time, I began to understand that there were many characters in gule wamkulu and they were all basically dancers. Many questions still remained unanswered and my curiosity persisted, albeit from a distance. But then I developed curiosity for many other things and began to seek possible explanations to them. I have shared on this column, for example, how my brother and I wondered how an electric bulb worked and attempted to assemble one using thin wire (mischievously extracted from the wire mesh placed on windows) inserted in an empty bottle.

Bright’s curiosity, unlike mine, appeared to be confined to gule wamkulu. Living at Lumbadzi and in close proximity to an international airport, I would have expected him to develop curiosity over aeroplanes and consequently explore how they achieved flight. There was a project at the airport where the Japanese installed solar panels. I would have expected Bright to get crazy about solar energy and learn what he could about this technology.

One problem we have in this country is that we do not have our own people making these high technology gadgets. As a result, our young people do not have anybody to look up to in that field. They easily get attracted to pursuits such as gule wamkulu because they know several people who practice these things.

We ought to expose our boys and girls to the exploits of people such as Willitam Kamkwamba from Kasungu, for example. Elsewhere in the world Kamkwamba is a celebrity, inspiring hosts of young people into internalising the value of not giving up in life and trying out new things. Hollywood actually shot a Kamkwamba film and yet in his own country he remains virtually unknown. Even the teachers who are supposed to unpack him to their pupils will not have heard about him. Bright would perhaps have diversified his curiosity to windmill assembly had he been exposed to Kamkwamba at school.

Several years ago, there emerged from Madisi, Dowa, one Felix Kambwiri with his helicopter. The general reaction from the average Malawian was one of skepticism:  “I doubt if it will fly.”

I maintained that the real value of Kambwiri’s project was not so much in him suddenly setting up a helicopter assembly line and getting inundated with orders for choppers from within and without as in him becoming a role model to aspiring young Malawians. His machine would have been a prototype that others would study, note the defective areas and suggest improvements. And perhaps Bright’s curiosity would have shifted to helicopters.

We need to search within our communities for technological pursuits that locals can participate in so that our young people will have people to look up to.  That is one of the ways in which we can ensure that the economy of this country is technologically led and on a sound footing.