Chapter 5

While Trywell had built a trading business, his brother John had established a farm near the districts of Wimbe and Kasungu where President Banda gave lots of support for farming estates. John worked his way up in an estate until he had enough money to start his own tobacco farm. In 1989, when William is one, John asks Trywell to come live in the village and work on the farm. Trywell agrees because he knows farming will give more profit than he makes now as a trader, and he has three kids to feed. The Kamkwamba family moves to the village of Masitala in the Wimbe district, and William’s childhood begins.

John gives Trywell one acre of land to plant burley tobacco to sell and maize to eat. William explains that maize is white corn, and says that his book will teach plenty about growing corn. Trywell helps John with his tobacco plants, making nursery beds in the dambo (marshy land with enough water and nutrients for good crops). It is hard, exhausting work, but Trywell is committed to making a better life for himself the way that Uncle John has done.

As the Kamkwamba family grows, Trywell also has to build a new house to better fit the children. After working in the fields, Trywell comes home and fashions bricks out of grass and clay, which he had to dig out of pits two kilometers away from the house. When all the bricks are made, Trywell builds a roof out of long stemmed grass. It takes two months to make a two-room house, the hardest thing Trywell ever had to do. After three years, the Kamkwamba family has enough money to hire men to add two new buildings to their house so that the four Kamkwamba sisters can have a room. William, as the only boy, gets his own room, which becomes his fortress and day-dreaming hideaway.

A man named Mister Phiri works on Uncle John’s farm during the planting and harvesting seasons. Phiri has incredible strength from a magic ritual called mangolomera, where a paste of leopard and lion bones is rubbed into cuts in a man’s knuckles. Only the toughest men can survive the mangolomera and earn superhuman strength. Phiri’s power allows him to do amazing things, such as rip up trees from their roots and kill a black mamba snake, but it also pushes him to fight all the time.

One afternoon, Phiri starts to argue with another worker named James because James did not buy some items Phiri needed from the market. William hears the commotion and goes to watch. Phiri starts punching James, and William knows that Phiri’s mangolomera will soon beat James to death. Trywell comes to break up the noise, and Phiri begs Trywell to bring the sweet potato vines that act as kryptonite to mangolomera. With no vines nearby, Trywell grabs Phiri and locks the large man in his arms until Phiri can calm down. William cannot believe that his father is strong enough to defeat even mangolomera. Though James is not beaten that badly, Phiri’s mangolomera rubs off enough that James gets sick the next day.

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