The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Soon after Muluzi denies the famine on the radio, William notices that Khamba truly is starving to death. After the treat of the goat skin at Christmas, William has not been able to feed Khamba because there is never enough to share with a dog. William wakes up the next morning aching with hunger and decides to go hunting to try and fill the clawing void in his stomach. Khamba, electrified by the word “hunt,” manages to go with William.

William takes ash to use as bait for his trap, then heads out into the rain. At the trap site, William sets up his snare and begins to daydream about how delicious the meat will taste, and how it might fortify Khamba to live one more month until the harvest is ready. Yet the birds realize it is only ash and hop away before the trap catches anything.

That night, Khamba falls deeply asleep, waking only when William brings him a small pinch of nsima. Two days later, Khamba vomits up what food William can give him and William knows the end is near. Charity and Mizeck stop by William’s house and Mizeck becomes enraged by the sight of Khamba’s sickly frame. Charity and Mizeck force William to “be a man,” and agree to put Khamba out of his misery.

The next day, Charity and William take Khamba out to the forest. The day is beautiful, for once, but William can only feel the hot tears beginning in his throat. They stop at the blue gum grove, and Charity ties Khamba to a tree. William gathers the courage to take one last look at Khamba, shattered by the sight of his pitiful frame as Khamba understands he is being left for good. Charity rationalizes that Khamba was old, but William knows he has done a terrible thing.

Uncle Socrates comes to visit Trywell the next day, and asks William where Khamba is. William pretends he doesn’t know, and Socrates guesses that wild dogs got Khamba. Charity arrives the next morning and convinces William to go check if Khamba is dead. Carrying hoes to make people think they are going to do field work, the boys approach the blue gum grove. Khamba’s body is huddled under the tree, with insects crawling in his mouth, and no sign that the dog struggled at all against the rope. William somehow finds the energy to dig a grave and the boys bury Khamba. Until William began writing this memoir, he says, Khamba’s death had remained a secret.

Two weeks after Khamba’s death, a cholera outbreak reaches Wimbe from southern Malawi. Cholera attacks a person’s stomach, causing violent diarrhea that leaves the body so weak that death comes within six hours of the first symptoms. The disease is a constant threat in Malawi in the rainy season when floods wash pollution from poorly built latrines into drinking sources. During the famine, migrant workers would be struck with cholera on the road, contaminating even more ground when the rains came.

The clinic gives out chlorine tablets as a preventative measure for cholera, and the Kamkwambas closely monitor the cover on their latrine. Still, William can’t escape the sight of people stricken with cholera walking to the clinic and the chlorine-burials at the Catholic church in the village. People are dying every day from hunger or cholera.

After months of eating solely pumpkin leaves, Geoffrey’s anemia has also worsened, leaving his body swollen with fluids and too weak to walk. Geoffrey is even struck blind in bright light. Agnes takes half of their family’s flour for the day and takes it to Geoffrey’s mother because she cannot allow any of the Kamkwamba family to suffer. Two days later, Agnes does the same for Grandpa.

All of the Kamkwambas have lost perilous amounts of weight. Trwyell begins weighing himself obsessively, but Agnes refuses to weigh herself and forbids the children from approaching the scale. Agnes tells her daughters to trick their brains away from hunger by thinking of good things. Trywell begins excusing himself from meals and tells William in secret that “hunger only kills men.” William understands, having seen men take on the bulk of the pressure of foraging food for an entire family and burning precious energy in the fields.

A week later, Mayless contracts malaria and is unable to eat. She can’t go to the clinic because the building is quarantined with cholera. The Kamkwambas can do nothing but pray, until Mayless finally recovers. She gets better, but is thinner than a ghost.

In Mid-February, William and Geoffrey help Trywell prune the tobacco crop. The boys wish they could eat the tobacco leaves as they hang the bundles to dry. Before the tobacco is even ready, Trywell begins making deals for tobacco so that the Kamkwambas will have food that night. As the weeks go by, the rates of tobacco for maize get steeper and steeper, but Trywell somehow manages to keep the numbers all straight in his head.

Meanwhile, the corn crop continues to ripen. William estimates twenty more days before the first green maize, called dowe, will be ready to eat. He dreams about the sweet taste of this plant, likening it to American corn on the cob. Rumors that the dowe is already ready in the southwest cause a stampede of people rushing toward the food source and worse thievery along the road. On February 27th, President Muluzi informs the people that there is a hunger crisis, after nearly five months of intense suffering in rural Malawi.

At the beginning of March, William begins checking the dowe to see if it is ready. Finally, the crop is ripe and William races back to his house with arms full of dowe. He and his sisters hurriedly cook the ears of corn, not even waiting for them to cool before devouring every last kernel. Through a stroke of good fortune, the pumpkins are also ready in the fields, and the Kamkwamba family has its first hearty supper in months. William tells Geoffrey that they are like the seeds from a parable that Jesus once told—planted on fertile soil, and able to survive.

As dowe and pumpkins bring people back from the edge of starvation, the village begins to reawaken. While life cannot really return to normal until the next harvest, people smile and chatter in the street instead of speaking only of hunger and ganyu. However, the dowe also brings thieves who creep into fields at night and devour all the ripe dowe they can find. Some farmers exact horrible revenge on these thieves, but Trywell counsels William that all Malawians faced the same hunger, and they must learn to forgive.