Ordinary People Watching Chapter Summary

This books takes places in a tiny village called Masitala, in Malawi, where a boy by the name of William Kamkwamba lives. The village is extremely poor, the houses consisting of mud, nobody having electricity, and not many being educated.

Chapter 1.
This chapter is about William's friends, his everyday life, and magic. William’s best friends are Gilbert, Geoffrey his cousin, and Peter. They usually do things like buy candy, race cars they made, play soccer, cut designs into wheels of trucks, and have spit-ball wars. William also believed in magic, and magicians who “cure illnesses”, or “cast curses” on people, or other things like that. People pay thousands of kwacha for magicians to help them somehow. William is now coming to his senses, and believing a little bit more that these magicians.

Chapter 2.
In this chapter, we learn that William's Uncle dies, leaving Geoffrey without a dad. Right after that, Williams other uncle lost his
Most families though Mawali were experiencing the same things. Almost nobody had more than a tiny bit of food, and now people were becoming desperate. Williams family had to sell their goats and cut back on the amount of food they ate. Everybody was slowly starving. William went to a government sale and got 15 kilograms for a lot of money. Khamba was getting very old and weak, and often groaned of hunger. Then, their chickens died of disease. Malawi was not doing well.
Chapter 6.
William did not do well on his exams, and got assigned to the worst school in the district. The new year came and the maize started to grow which was a sign of hope that they would eat again soon and the starvation would be over. HOwever, the starvation continued. William and Gilbert now began to go to school, which was in a bad state. Only a little ways into the school year, Williams family could not afford it and he had to drop out. That afternoon when Gilbert came home from school he told William that almost everybody had dropped out.

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