FACING THE IMPOSSIBLE
August 6, 1942 / Warsaw Ghetto, Poland
When German soldiers arrived at an orphanage with instructions to deport all 192 children and their caretakers to Treblinka, an extermination camp in Poland, Janusz Korczak faced a critical decision. He was the head of the orphanage, and a respected figure in Poland. He knew that the children were being sent to the gas chamber. For them, there would be no escape. Korczak, though, was offered a way out. Freedom could be his if he wanted it.
Korczak knew what lay ahead for the children — a long train ride in stifling boxcars; a terrifying countdown to death once they reached Treblinka. Rather than abandon the children, he volunteered to escort them to the camp, willingly choosing death for himself so the children would not die alone.
Korczak knew that if he acted calmly, if he modelled bravery, it would ease the children’s anxiety on their final journey. He told the children to wear their best clothes and happiest faces, for they were leaving the dreary ghetto. Then, clutching a child’s hand in each of his own, he led them out of the orphanage and guided them down the street to a waiting train 5 kilometres away.
Korczak, the children and their caretakers were never heard from again. His courageous act has not been forgotten, though. It lives on in numerous books, plays and films that tell his story, and in statues erected to his memory in Poland. It also lives on in the lesson Janusz Korczak taught us: When survival itself is not possible, how you face death may be the only choice left.
11.
REACHING EVERY VILLAGE
The famine left little money for food, or to send William to school.
When the rains finally came, they were heavy, falling night and day for a week. In west Africa, great floods swept over Malawi, washing away homes, livestock and any seedlings that had sprouted. For months afterward, the sun blazed in a cloudless sky, baking the earth. Plants that survived the flood shrivelled and died. Famine followed. Then drought.
At the home in Masitala village where fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba lived with his family, there was food on the table most days, even if it was only blobs of soybean paste, a few roasted nuts or a spoonful of cooked pumpkin leaves. As the famine continued, food prices across Malawi skyrocketed. There was less on the Kamkwamba table, and often William went to bed hungry. More and more of the family’s meagre income went to buying food, leaving little for luxuries like kerosene to light lamps at night, or for books and school uniforms for William and his six sisters. By the end of the year, there was no money to send William to school. He was forced to drop out just a few weeks after starting grade nine.
“I decided I would build my own windmill.”
Facing long, empty days, William looked for ways to keep occupied. He discovered a small library in Wimbe Primary School, one with three floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books. William befriended the librarian and read in the shade outdoors, feasting on all kinds of subjects — Geography, Mathematics, Electronics.
One day William found a science book called Using Energy. The cover showed a long row of windmills. Inside, the pages described how windmills generated electricity and were used around the world to pump water and provide light.
To William, the book spelled hope. If a windmill could do all of these things, imagine what one could do for his family. “Standing there looking at this book, I decided I would build my own windmill,” he wrote later.
Each morning for a month, William headed to an abandoned scrapyard across from his former school. Machine parts littered the ground. Old pumps, springs, coils, pipes, sun-bleached cars, rusty tractors — treasures for the taking.
William dragged pieces home and stashed them in his room, around his bed, behind the door — wherever he could find space. Guided by the textbook, he split some PVC pipe down the middle with a bow saw, heated it in a grass fire behind the kitchen to soften the plastic, hammered the pieces flat and shaped them into blades. He bolted four of the blades to a tractor fan and fastened the fan to the shaft of a giant shock absorber.
His father had a broken bicycle. It was missing handlebars, had only one wheel and the frame was rusty, but to William the wreck was perfect for his windmill — if only his father would give it to him.
William explained his plan, his dream of supplying the family with electricity, and water not only for drinking but perhaps better crops. “We could have lights! We could pump water and have an extra harvest. We’ll never go hungry again!”
It took an hour of negotiating, but finally his father consented.
A local welder fastened the shock absorber to the bicycle frame. William’s windmill was almost complete, but a crucial piece was still missing. To convert wind energy into electricity, he still needed a generator.
William reread the science book. Generators all work in much the same way. Magnets inside the generator turn, forcing electrical charges to flow through coils of insulated wire.
William searched the scrapyard for weeks looking for a generator, but he came up empty-handed. Then one day as he and his friend Gilbert walked down a road, a stranger on a bicycle passed by. The man had a headlamp on the handlebars that was wired to a small generator rigged to his back tire. With each crank of the pedals, the tire spun, turning a small wheel on the generator, producing electricity to light the headlamp.
Knowing that William couldn’t afford it on his own, Gilbert bought the generator for him. William connected it to his dad’s bike frame. With the help of Gilbert and another friend, he built a 5-metre tower out of blue gum trees harvested from a nearby grove. Then, using wire borrowed from his mother’s clothesline, William constructed a makeshift pulley system and hoisted the contraption to the top.
William’s windmill atop a 5-metre-high tower.
Perched high above homes in the village, the windmill soon attracted curious visitors. Within minutes a dozen people had gathered at the base, eyes glued to the tower. Holding a light bulb connected by wires to the generator, William stood with the crowd to watch and wonder along with the others: Would it work?
Wind whipped across the blades. They began to spin. The light bulb flickered, then glowed. The crowd cheered.
“It was glorious light …! I threw my hands in the air and screamed with joy. I began to laugh so hard I became dizzy,” William said.
He ran insulated copper wire from the windmill into the house, and connected the wire to light bulbs positioned in different rooms. There was no need to spend money on fuel for kerosene lamps now. Electricity was theirs and it was free, too.
But electricity was just one of the family’s challenges. Their water supply came from a shallow well outside the house. Hauling water from the well one pail at a time was back-breaking work. Most days there was barely enough for drinking and washing clothes, leaving little for the parched crops.
In a book called Explaining Physics, William found a picture of a water pump. The pump didn’t look too complicated — a system of pistons and valves that drew water through pipes. William figured he could make one.
At the scrapyard he found several plastic irrigation pipes. He fed a 12-metre section of pipe into the well, then inserted a thinner, metal pipe inside. Connected to a second windmill, the metal pipe moved up and down much like a piston, creating a vacuum that drew water out of the well. Over time William fine-tuned the device, greasing the sides, upgrading the tubes, perfecting his invention and adding improvements.
In an area often struck with drought, its people mostly poor, William’s hand-built machines brought relief and independence. With an ample supply of electricity and water at their disposal, the Kamkwamba household prospered. There was money now for things like books and tuition fees. After a five-year absence, William returned to school. Encouraged by his teachers, he started a science club for students.
Word of William’s success spread. Visitors drove long distances to take photographs of his “electric wind” machine. Reporters wrote about him in newspapers and magazines, and his st
ory was featured on television and radio.
In 2007 William was invited to speak at a technology conference in Tanzania. Offers of scholarships to attend university followed, and he was invited to speak in far-off places. Inspired by William, people are building machines like his in other hard-struck areas of the world, bringing power and water to those most in need.
12.
PEOPLE, HAVE SOME SHAME
Shocked by the desperate acts of fellow Egyptians, Asmaa Mahfouz boldly called for action.
The Egyptian woman in the YouTube video is small and slight. Wisps of black hair show beneath her hijab — her Muslim head covering. She looks younger than her twenty-six years and although she is speaking Arabic, you cannot shift your attention away. There is fire in her eyes, certainty in her voice, authority in her tone. When your eyes finally drift to the English translation that flows across the bottom of the screen, you catch a few words: People, have some shame.
During the almost thirty-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians like Asmaa Mahfouz, the woman in the video, lived in fear. Citizens had few human rights. It was even illegal to gather in groups of five or more without government approval. Beatings and torture were commonplace. Jails were filled with those who disobeyed the rules, those who spoke out about the corrupt police and Mubarak’s strong-arm ways, or those who were even related to others who were presumed guilty. Fear of the government kept Egyptians quiet and oppressed.
Egyptian demonstrators took to the streets to call for the resignation of President Mubarak.
In April 2008 when workers in Mahalla, Egypt, protested their dire working conditions, Mahfouz took a bold step. Believing that change was necessary, she joined the Youth Movement. Along with hundreds of other student activists, she looked for ways to oust Mubarak and bring democracy to Egypt.
Like others in the Youth Movement, she operated secretly, wary of the police who had the power to arrest activists and imprison them without charges. The group criticized Mubarak’s government and often used blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to make their views known. Sometimes they posted YouTube videos that showed police beating and torturing citizens. Like others, Mahfouz kept her posts anonymous, never signing her name or showing her face, fearful of the harm that might come to her family and herself.
A young Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire to protest the unfair government.
On December 17, 2010, events in nearby Tunisia shocked the world. In an act known as self-immolation, a young street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest the unfair government. The act galvanized Tunisians. In solidarity, citizens rose as one, demonstrating and rioting in the streets. In the face of widespread opposition, the Tunisian president resigned.
In Egypt, four men followed Bouazizi’s lead. In full public view, they set themselves on fire. One of the men, Ahmed Hashem el-Sayed, died. Shocked at the desperateness of their acts, Mahfouz made another video. But this one was different.
She sat in front of a camera in a stark room. Although her head was covered by a traditional hijab, her face was exposed. She identified herself and gave her Twitter account. Speaking Arabic in a clear, unwavering voice, she said: “Four Egyptians have set themselves on fire to protest humiliation and hunger and poverty and degradation they had to live with for thirty years … People, have some shame.”
For four minutes and thirty-six seconds, the words rolled out, powerful and convincing. She talked about injustice and the abuse suffered by Egyptians under Mubarak. She talked about new possibilities for her country and the rights and responsibilities of each citizen. Finally she called on Egyptians to take action. “Sitting at home and just following us on the news or on Facebook leads to our humiliation — it leads to my humiliation … Go down to the street, send messages, post it on the Internet, make people aware.”
She ended with a call for people to join together in protest at Cairo’s Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, a national holiday in Egypt. “We’ll go and demand our rights, our fundamental human rights,” she said.
The risks were high. Days before, she and other protesters had been arrested by police for speaking out against Mubarak. Now anyone who watched the video, even the police or Mubarak himself, would be able to identify her.
Within days the video went viral, shared around the world on cell phones and the Internet. Egyptians were struck by the boldness of Mahfouz’s act. Encouraged by the reaction, she made other videos and repeated her call to action. On January 24, the day before the planned protest in Tahrir Square, she posted one more: “Tomorrow, if we make our stand despite all that security may do to us, and stand as one in peaceful protest, it will be the first real step on the road to change, the first real step that will take us forward.”
On January 25 she went to Tahrir Square to protest, not knowing if police would arrest her, if she would be imprisoned or if her family would suffer consequences. She hoped she wouldn’t be alone. To her surprise an estimated one million Egyptians joined her, filling the square and adjoining streets. Carrying signs and shouting slogans, they protested peacefully, demanding an end to the Mubarak regime.
United in their cause, Egyptians continued their non-violent protest over the following weeks. Overwhelmed by the opposition, Mubarak resigned on February 11, 2011.
Egypt still has hurdles to cross in its quest for fair and democratic government, but Asmaa Mahfouz’s open challenge showed that in an age of social media, bold words can have greater influence than any other weapon.
FACING THE IMPOSSIBLE
June 16, 1976 / Soweto, South Africa
At a time when the Republic of South Africa was divided along racial lines, apartheid practices kept Blacks oppressed and segregated from Whites. In 1976 newspaper photographer Sam Nzima attended a protest rally of thousands of unarmed Black students in Soweto. Unexpectedly, the police opened fire, gunning down defenceless students at random. One was thirteen-year-old Hector Pieterson.
Nzima continued taking pictures, including one that showed Hector Pieterson’s limp and lifeless body being carried by a fellow student. Knowing the police would want to confiscate the pictures and keep Soweto a secret from the rest of the world, Nzima removed the film from his camera, tucked it into his sock and then passed it on to his driver with instructions to take it to his office immediately.
The next day Nzima’s photo of Hector Pieterson appeared in newspapers around the globe. Through that single picture, the world discovered the bloody truth about Soweto, beginning a wave of change that eventually saw an end to apartheid in South Africa.
“I was just shooting, I didn’t have a sense of what pictures I was taking … But something told me that I needed to protect these pictures,” Sam Nzima told a reporter years later.
CREATING THE IMPOSSIBLE
September, 2007 / Cambridge, Nova Scotia, Canada
When grade-twelve students David Shepherd and Travis Price heard of a bullying incident at their school, they took action. A newcomer, a grade-nine boy, had worn a pink polo shirt on his first day. Bullies belittled the boy for his choice of clothing, calling him a homosexual and taunting him with names like queer and fag.
“I figured enough was enough,” David said.
Deciding to show their support for the student in a unique way, David and Travis bought every pink T-shirt they could find at a nearby used-clothing store.
The two boys went online and e-mailed their classmates, offering them T-shirts and encouraging them to stand up to bullying by wearing pink the next day.
The reaction was overwhelming. The next morning the school was awash in a “sea of pink” as hundreds of students showed up wearing pink clothes.
The effect was twofold — the bullied boy felt the support of his schoolmates, and the bullies knew their behaviour would not be tolerated.
News of the pink shirt episode spread, sparking an anti-bullying movement that continues to grow. Now, on the second Wednesday of each Apri
l, millions of people worldwide don pink clothes for International Pink Shirt Day, taking a stand against discrimination, much like David and Travis did at their school in 2007.
“We never expected this reaction,” Travis said of the boys’ idea and the results it achieved. “We did it simply because it felt right.”
13.
SWEPT INTO OBLIVION
Christopher was trapped waist-deep in sewage and breathing toxic air.
Fifteen-year-old Christopher Watt stood in waist-deep brown water, shivering from the cold. It was pitch black inside the sewer, and except for the gush of running water and his hollow cries for help, it was mostly quiet. The air was foul, reeking of human waste. Christopher’s soggy clothes were caked with the disgusting stuff.
Hours before on that evening of June 10, 2000, Christopher had entered an open manhole at the corner of Walkley and Hawthorne roads in Ottawa, Ontario. With friends cheering him until the dare had gone wrong, he’d fallen off the slippery ladder and got caught in the swift flow. Carried by the current, he had rocketed down sewer lines and careened over spillways, moving ever closer to the Green Creek sewage treatment plant. He’d stopped before reaching the plant, though. Now he was standing inside a large concrete pipe, trapped somewhere in the city’s 220-kilometre sewer system.
Each toxic breath was a reminder of the hopelessness of his situation. Survival seemed unlikely; rescue remote. I’m going to die, Christopher told himself.
* * *
Within minutes of his disappearance, Christopher’s friends rallied. At 8:39 p.m. someone called 911 and started a chain reaction. Dozens of firefighters converged on the site. Soon they were joined by police, ambulance workers and municipal crews who understood the city’s sewer system and its meandering ways. Minutes later Christopher’s mother arrived.
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