The battery needs to charge

I recently watched "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind". It's a film based on the life of William Kamkwamba, a schoolboy in Malawi. He's a keen student in his village school in the town of Wimbe, and spends his time tinkering and repairing radios and other gadgets. 

In the early-2000s, Malawi suffers from a famine due to a combination of flooding, followed by drought. Things get desperate, resulting in theft, riots, and William's sister even leaves the family to find a new life elsewhere. 

William comes upon the idea of building a makeshift windmill. If they can generate electricity, they can pump a stream of water up from the well. If they can get a stream of water going, then they can irrigate their fields, and won't be entirely dependent on rain. 

After much persuasion, he finally convinces his father to break their one precious bicycle into parts, so that they can be used to construct the windmill.

I found the scene where they build the windmill quite moving. The young William leads the construction, with the whole village following his lead in a desperate kind of hope. When the windmill finally starts turning... nothing happens. The motor at the well remains silent. You can almost feel the deflation of hope in the villagers. 

But William is unfazed. He quickly climbs down the windmill and tells the villagers, "the battery needs to charge!" So they leave the windmill overnight. The next day, he leads the villagers to start building a little irrigation channel from the well to the fields. The villagers follow his lead again, even though the motor still remains silent.

They work hard in the hot sun, hacking away at the dry soil, and setting up the irrigation channels. It's a desperate kind of faith, because they're working to set up irrigation, but there's no water. And then suddenly... there's a sputter. All the villagers look up! 

Another sputter. Then the motor starts up! Still, no water. The villagers look on with a mix of dread and anticipation.

Then there's a trickle.

It stops for a moment, then restarts. 

And the trickle turns into a steady flow! The villagers leap for joy, as the water starts running through the irrigation channel! They put little pebbles at intervals, so that when water runs up against the pebbles, it spills over the edge of the channel onto the parched soil.

It worked! William's father gives his son a hug, and tells the rest of the villagers - we're going to make it. We can make it through until the crops grow to harvest.

William Kamkwamba later founds the "Moving Windmills Project", a foundation whose goal is to support education, build low-cost wells, install solar-powered pumps, renovate local schools and provide new facilities and learning materials, so that Malawian villages will not have to go through famines as severe as William and his family had to endure.

The film reminded me of the small work that my friends and I do with the school in Batam. Thankfully, there is no famine there. But life is still not easy, even though it's just an hour's ride away from the bustle and glitz of the city centre. Clean water remains an issue. Access to medical care remains an issue. Regular paying jobs remain an issue. Education remains an issue.

5 years ago, the school had a handful of students, and operated out of an abandoned shophouse. Even up to 2 years ago, we were evicted, even from those ragged premises! 

Fast forward just a bit, and today, we have 70+ students, a full school compound, with an assembly area, separate classrooms for each level, a library, a sick bay, and even a computer lab. The school has even been assessed and accredited to conduct the national primary examinations.

We still have a long way to go. I certainly don't think we've made the enduring impact that William Kamkwamba made. But we're working to get there. We've got friends who are teachers here in Singapore, volunteering to put together an English curriculum that is culturally relevant to our students, to give them a better chance at good jobs in future. 

We've got doctors volunteering to go over to see our friends, and the villagers come walking for hours from miles away, bringing their sick friends, and then patiently waiting for hours for their turn to see them.

We've got regular folks, who just want to help, and we organise games for the students, simple parenting workshops, distribute groceries, and perhaps most importantly, just spend time with our friends over there, so that they know they're not alone.

Sometimes, it feels like nothing we do has impact. Kids still end up selling water on the streets to cars stuck in traffic jams. Family members still run away in desperation. People still don't have jobs. People still fall sick and have no access to medical care or medication.

But it's like the battery in the movie. The windmill is already turning. The Spirit is already moving. But the battery needs time to charge. It seems like nothing is happening, but unseen, something is already happening. Things are already changing.

Then the life-giving water starts. It starts with a sputtering trickle. But once it gets going, surface tension does its magic (just Google it - how to make water flow uphill), momentum builds, and the water really gets going, up from the well source and onto the dry places. 

And we don't need to rush things. We put little pebbles in the irrigation channels. The water slows down, builds up, and then it overflows around and over the pebbles, so it spills out of the irrigation channels onto the soil. In the same way, we don't charge through every activity. No, we stop at individual homes, befriend and pray for individual families. We linger. And then the Spirit overflows.

We're not there yet. Sometimes, the battery is still charging. Sometimes, the water is still sputtering. Sometimes, there still aren't irrigation channels to where the water needs to go. Sometimes, we haven't lingered enough yet. There's so much more we're going to do, and so much more that desperately needs doing. But there's hope. And we're helping to bring it.

In Isaiah 58, the prophet Isaiah writes about the kind of real fasting that matters. It's not mere ritual or self-denial. No. The prophet Isaiah writes - isn't this real fasting? To loose the chains of injustice, to set the oppressed free? To share food with the hungry, and shelter to the wanderer? 

Then. Then, we will call and He will answer. Then, we will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

What a glorious name it will be to receive!

If anyone wants to know more, reach out to me!