The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
Okay, I’m not blogging about a romance, but I LOVE this book. Does that count??
Every once in a while, a really special book comes along and for me, this is the latest. THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer is the remarkable story of a fourteen-year-old boy in Malawi, Africa whose family’s poverty inspired him to great achievement.
Lacking enough money to pay for school, William had to drop out. He then began to spend time at a nearby library, where he saw a picture of a windmill in a book and decided that he would build one himself–from blue gum trees, spare tractor parts, and other scraps–to provide electricity for his family. Not able to read much of the English descriptions, William scoured the photograph and all of the diagrams associated with it, and used his ingenuity, creativity, and intelligence to accomplish this remarkable feat.
News of William’s windmill spread through neighboring villages and, after calling him crazy, people came to see this feat of engineering. Journalists came, too, and soon this unassuming boy from famine-stricken Africa, who advanced himself from nothing, was given money to return to school and was whisked off to the United States to visit wind farms and to tell his story and inspire not only his fellow Africans but everyone around the globe.
We need more people like this in the world. And we need to share this story. Please read it and tell everyone you know about it. This is the way we make the world a better place for all. Who doesn’t want to feel good about that??
You must also watch this clip from William Kamkwamba’s interview on THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART. He is 22 years old now and just charming. You will want to help spread the word after you see THIS, I promise you!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| William Kamkwamba | ||||
| www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
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Hofstede’s Cultural Dimentions. Individualism vrs Collectivism
Geert Hofstede analyzed national cultures in an empirical investigation from 1967 to 1973 with 116,000 employees from all levels of the multinational concern IBM, in more than 50 countries. He came to the conclusion that national cultures differ in four fundamental cultural dimensions (Goodwin 1999:23):
• Power Distance
• Individualism versus Collectivism
• Masculinity versus Femininity
• Uncertainty Avoidance
Later Hofstede and his colleagues identified a fifth dimension, long versus short term orientation, which won’t be included in our discussion as it is a work-related concept. These dimensions enable quantitative and qualitative analysis of various cultures as well as their distinction and comparison. Notwithstanding that Hofstede’s four cultural variability dimensions are mostly related to business organizational values in different cultures, we apply them in a personal relationships area. While, as Stella Ting-Toomey notes, the four value dimensions should be viewed as a first systematic empirical attempt to compare cultures on aggregate, group level (Ting-Toomey 1999:66).
The Individualism versus Collectivism cultural dimension analyzes the relationships between an individual and a group. Individualism-collectivism is, probably, the major dimension of cultural variability, explaining differences and similarities across cultures. Hofstede identifies individualism as “the tendency of people to look after themselves and their immediate family only” (Hofstede 1980:419). Individuals’ goals are more important than groups’ goals in individualistic cultures. Members of individualistic cultures have many different groups (e.g., family, social clubs, professions) and tend to be universalistic and apply the same value standards for everyone. In contrast, groups’ goals is the main priority for members of collectivistic cultures. Such aspects as mutual support and common action are particularly highlighted by them. Members of collectivistic cultures have only a few general groups that influence their behaviour according to the situation and which tend to be particularistic, e.g., apply different value standards for in-group and out-group members (Gudykunst and Mody 2001:27). Among individualistic countries are the United States, Great Britain, Canada and Germany. Latin America, South-East Asia and Africa tend to be rather a collective form of society.
Hall’s Time Dimention. Polychronic and Monochronic Cultures
The second dimension examined by Hall is people’s attitude towards, and the use of time. He describes those cultures that tend to do more than one thing at a time as polychronic and those that do one thing after another as monochronic (Hall 1985:13). Western Europe goes by monochronous time, meaning that a person gives his undivided attention to one event before proceeding to the next. He takes deadlines seriously, values promptness. Polychronic cultures, to which belongs Russia, are characterized by a great involvement with people. There is more emphasis on human transactions than on holding to schedules (Hall 1985:14). These people also have many close friends with whom they spend a great deal of time. The close links create a reciprocal feeling of obligation and a mutual desire to be helpful (Hall 1985:16). Russians basically live in polychronous time, in which a person deals simultaneously with multiple events and is very flexible about appointments. A person is always ready to change his/her schedule at a moment’s notice to accommodate a friend or relative, since he/she attaches more importance to long-term relationships that to short-term ones (Hall 1985:13-15).
Personal space is the next cultural dimension. As Hall argues, “each person has around him an invisible space which expands and contracts depending on the relationship to the people nearby, the person’s emotional state, cultural background and the activity being performed” (Hall 1985:11).
The dimension of information flow, Hall describes, as how long it takes a message intended to produce an action to travel from one part to another and for that message to release the desired response (Hall 1985:22). Information flow varies across cultures.
