I have fallen way behind

It is over a month since we had our first visitors from these three nations and they bring our virtual flag collection up to 131. We have, however, had visitors from 140 nations (as you can see in the sidebar), so I need to do some catching up.

St. Kitt's is one of the places in the world that I have visited when we did our "treasure island" cruise in the Caribbean on the Star Clipper some years ago. It is the smallest nation in the Americas and is among the Leeward Islands. [Wiki] It was a land of sugar cane plantations. While there we took a walk into a rainforest (and swung from liana vines - yes, like Tarzan in the movies but not quite so high up and without the fearsome call of the white ape).

Guyana is located east of Venezuela and west of Suriname. Prior to this year I had no personal link to Guyana but for the past five months I have been working side by side with a gentleman from Guyana. He tells me of life at the coast where one may go out to a levee and fish or take fruits of many kinds from the trees, as though sea and land alike were eager to offer their bounty and feed you.

We think of South America as being primarily Spanish-speaking, and so it is. The four exceptions are Brazil (Portuguese) - the best known - Suriname (Dutch), French Guiana (French), and Guyana (English). Guyanese Creole and several indigenous languages are also spoken there. I could not quite figure out my coworker's accent as he seemed culturally quite attuned to the Caribbeans in our group but his English had a different music to it. Guyana is a Commonwealth nation.

English, French, and Seychellois Creole are spoken in the Republic of Seychelles, an archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean. (Check out the geography post on East Africa and the Indian Ocean.) Lots of foreign investment going on there these days. I heard folks say this week that they don't extradite for any reason, so who knows, maybe Dick Cheney will retire there. I also recall friends talking about a trip there many years ago.

I think I skipped Mali. My bad. I will return to it on the next flag posting.

Sorry, no music this time around. I am far too far behind to do that too and it is already past my bedtime.

A hearty welcome to our visitors from these (and all) nations!
--the BB

East Africa - Indian Ocean

Well, if I wanted geography blogging to be a regular Monday event, I fell behind. I did not get in a mediation yesterday either. And it is getting late tonight. But I'm trying. I had formatted the graphics with the maps when I realized I had omitted the flags, and since I not only love flags but they help me recognize and remember nations, I went back and added them in. Time-consuming process.


Tonight we go to East Africa. More specifically, with the exception of Ethiopia we will be looking at coastal and island nations, reserving the inland countries of East Africa for another day.
From the close-up above you can visualize our path this evening. I will start with Eritrea and then head south along the coast to Mozambique, then head out to sea and circle about so that our path will be roughly counter-clockwise. Mayotte is a French island complex that will not be covered separately.

No commentary about the countries this round. Just give yourself a chance to ponder their outlines. You may click on any map to see more detail. Most maps are taken from the United States State Department website.









Well, a little commentary here. Réunion is French, so the official flag is the tricolor of France. Various local flags have been proposed in the past couple of decades and I show three main contenders here. If you go to the Wikipedia site for Réunion, you will see yet another flag (for the region) but that design has a copyright on it and I decided to leave it alone. Réunion is the outermost locale of the European Union and, being East of Europe, it was there that the euro was first used for currency.



I chose this region because it has been in the news. In today's World Watch (below) we had headlines involving Kenya (on its own) and Tanzania and the Comoros. Glancing at it again, I was intrigued and so just looked at the French article.

Mohamed Bacar organized local elections on the Island of Anjouan and defied both the government of the Comoros and the African Union. This is why Tanzanian troops joined the African Union ("UA" in French) forces heading to Anjouan to deal with this rebellion.

Now you know, and so do I. And we all know where the Comoros are and how close they are to Tanzania.
--the BB