To this day you can still hear this sentence from your father: Maybe you can use it again later! Most of the time he waved a piece of wood that was left over from some carpentry job, sometimes he just held a strange screw in his hand, no idea where he got it from. Everything was dragged into the so-called tool cellar, in which there were very few tools and all the more odds and ends. We smiled at this mania for collecting because we weren’t children of the war: Something’s broken? Useless? Can go!
Something fundamental has been lost with this attitude: the ability to build something functioning new from what appears to be useless or damaged. Finding a solution without first knowing how to get there, and perhaps with a bit of luck and perseverance, even creating amazing things. Just like Muhamad Sabsabi, Lebanese, 25 years old, did.
Sabsabi lives in a badly hit country, financial crisis, refugee crisis, he had to give up his studies of French literature, he doesn’t have the money for the fees. Power outages are part of everyday life. But in Akkar, where he lives, the wind blows quite regularly. Your own small wind power plant, wouldn’t that be nice? So Sabsabi read books, studied specialist articles, watched nerdy YouTube videos and built his own wind turbine from old barrels and other discarded material. It now spins on the roof of the house and supplies his family and a few neighbors with electricity. And what’s more, with its blue and white surfaces it looks a bit like a happy children’s carousel.
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