Africa Challenge - Madagascar

Madagascar is an island located between the Mozambique Channel and the Indian Ocean. It's capital is Antananarivo.

By the Way we just bought vanilla beans that were grown in Madagascar.

Map of Africa

This was my Fourth Quarter Geography Project.

It's Coming Off

It's Coming Off

Encompassing many different countries in east Africa, and at a length of about 2000 miles, you have probably not heard of this spectacular land formation. I will not tell you the name, but I will give you clues in this paragraph, as I have given you two already. Ready… Go! Three lakes lie in it, Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. One of the tallest mountains in the world lies on its' edge, Mt. Kilimanjaro. The worlds' longest river has its source in its area, the Nile River. Most of the Serengeti Plain lies within it. But perhaps the most important, concerning and amazing thing about it, is that it will cut the entire continent in two someday. Have you guessed it by now? If you have, good job, if you have not, it is the Great Rift Valley.

The valley does run through a great many countries, from Eritrea in the north, to Mozambique in the south, crossing ten other countries in between. The center of the valley covered with fertile plains, bordered by huge mountains and steep cliffs. I know that you have knowledge of the Serengeti Plain, and that most animals of Africa live there. Now as I said before, the Great Rift Valley will some day spilt Africa in half. The reason for that is because two of the Earth's plates are pulling apart from each other, or they're 'rifting,' creating a lowland or valley in between. At their current speed today, the plates should fully come apart in about 125 million years from now.

Diagram credits here.

Africa Map

Here's another map I drew. This time it's Africa.

The Country of Ethiopia

Last Saturday night, my family had some guests over for dinner. As you probably guessed from the title of this essay, their home country is Ethiopia. After they left, my mom told me that she had learned that since Ethiopia is such a mountainous country, their people are safe from most mosquito induced diseases, which are very common in that particular continent. A fact that I found to be very interesting is that eighty-percent of the mountains of Africa are located in Ethiopia.

I also think that it's very intriguing that Ethiopia is just barely landlocked by three countries; Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. In the past, Ethiopia had a pretty funny name, Abyssinia. In World War II, Ethiopia was controlled by Italy, and the rest of Africa was controlled by the French, Spanish, British, German, and Portuguese. After the war however, the African modern nations started to form. One of these was Ethiopia, now a fully independent country.

Today, Ethiopia is a prosperous nation at the top of the Great Rift Valley. Some day that rift will split Africa in half because two of the earth's plates are drifting away from each other and three of the worlds largest lakes lie in that valley . Today, while it is still intact, Ethiopia seems like a really great country to visit.

Chocolate Cake Farm

Ria just recently posted about the Chocolate Cake Farm on Liber Parma.
First I looked in our encyclopedia for baking soda (which is one of the ingedients) instead I found baking powder which has baking soda in it and it had the scientific name in it to (sodium bicarbonate). Then I looked for sodium bicarbonate and I only found sodium but in that section there was part for other articles one of them was bicarbonate of soda. Then later electroblogster and I spent about an hour looking on the internet for where the ingredients would grow and came out with somewhere in southern Kenya, Africa.