The Ultimate Guide to Geography

We all need this. In a previously published article, I addressed the urgent need of a circumspect reform of the American system of education. The United States ranks amongst the lowest in the world on geographical matters. Belarus what? Sri Lanka who? In plain English, pick a random person off the street and they probably will not be able to tell you where the Danube River is.

Geography really is not that hard to comprehend, all that is really needed to have a strong background is a globe. Personally, I could look at maps and world globes for hours, political maps, physical maps, etc. Here are some basics about the world that we should all know.

To start off easy, everybody knows that the capital of the United States is Washington DC, but most of us are oblivious about our neighbor to the north. The capital of Canada is not Toronto or Montreal or Quebec (which is a province, by the way). Ottawa is its capital and they do not have a president, but a prime minister (currently, Harper). Not all Canadians speak French, but almost all of them do speak English.

Away from North America, let's continue with a more global view. There are seven continents; North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica. Antarctica is not a country, does not have a national anthem, and does not have people. It is a barren, icy wasteland dotted with research compounds where scientists live seasonally. In contrast, Australia IS a country and continent with people; they drive on the left side of the road, have summer when we have winter and vice versa, and their toilets flush counterclockwise.

Asia includes from as far west as Israel to as far east as the Philippines and everything in between. Nepal and China share a border where the highest mountain in the world is located, Mount Everest. Russia lies both in Asia and Europe and since the break up of the USSR, it has spilt dozens of new countries on the map. Indians are not Muslim therefore they do not pray to Allah five times a day. They are Hindi, which means they believe in reincarnation and all that good stuff. By the way, Sri Lanka is a tear drop shaped country directly south of India, which looks like an inverted triangle on the map.

There are twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Singapore is a tiny country on it own little tiny island right nudged between Malaysia and Indonesians. Indonesians are primarily Muslim. The most dangerous, pirated passage of navigable water is the Strait of Malacca off of the coasts of Indonesia and Malaysia. Yes, pirates still exist. Not the kind you see on Pirates of the Caribbean, but the more modern prototypes with machine guns and grenades.

Let me address the "Stans". Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. They are all former Soviet Republics; some are Muslim and others Christians. They speaks their national languages and in addition to, Russian. The Russian language was imposed upon them during Stalin's Soviet regime. They were prohibited to speak their native languages in public. In an answer to my previous question earlier in the article, Belarus is in Europe, bordering Russia. Yes, it too is a former Soviet land.

Africa's geography is the most complicated one to understand since there are so many countries and we do not hear about the as much on the news compared to Asian and European countries. Not all of Africa is grassland with wildebeest running from lions. Africa has highly developed urban pockets such as Johannesburg in South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Cairo, Egypt; and Casablanca, Morocco, just to name a couple. Black is the dominant race and there are over a hundred different tribal languages spoken on the continent. The Nile is the longest river in the world which is located in Africa and it runs south to north and empties in the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt, beginning in Tanzania. The Sahara Desert also spans most of the northern area of the continent.

The Middle East. The reason the Arab countries have their panties in a bunch over Israel is because after World War II, England and the US had nowhere to put all of the leftover Jews from the Holocaust. So they cut Palestine and gave the Jews their "Holy Land" they claim to originate from and called it Israel, national anthem, schools, and everything included. Also, after World War I, England, the US, and France butchered up what was left of the Ottoman Empire and named them autonomous countries.

The Arabian Peninsula consists of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (a little chunk to its north), Qatar (a finger-like projection into the Persian Gulf), and Oman and Yemen in the south of the peninsula. These are all Muslim nations. Some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, believe it or not, are located in the Persian Gulf.

Europeans become upset and criticize Americans for not knowing how to locate their countries on a map, much less state their capital. Sorry Britney Spears, London and Paris are not countries; they are capitals, capitals of England and France, respectively. "Deutsch" is not "Dutch". Deutsch is German for "German" and Deutschland is German for Germany! On the subject of the "Ds", Danish people are called Danes and are from Denmark.

Switzerland and Sweden is not the same thing. Switzerland is a land-locked, trilingual nation where "Swiss" live and Sweden is a Nordic nation home to "Swedes". Capiche? That means "Understand?" in Italian. Sorry, Yugoslavia no longer exists. It was broken up in the 1990s into a handful of Slavic nations. Slavic nations are those with "Slav" origins, tracing all the way back to Russia. The people who speak languages the Balkan Peninsula can understand the Russian language, as they are all part of the same family of language, similar to how Spanish speakers can understand Italian. Capiche?

Czechoslovakia as well as Serbia and Montenegro no longer exist. Czechoslovakia now is the Czech Republic and Slovakia, two separate entities. Serbia is just Serbia and Montenegro is just Montenegro. No need to join them with a conjunction anymore.

All right, not all Hispanic people are Mexican or Cuban, since there are well over twenty Latin American countries with different customs and variations of the Spanish language. South America has the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina. On this continent there are deserts, snow-capped peaks, tropical beaches, and humid jungles. The Amazon Rainforest is located mostly in Brazil, covering most of the country. It is the largest in the world. Also, the second largest river is located in South America, being consequently, the Amazon River.

Central America links North America to South America. In between is the Caribbean, with tons of tropical island nations. Cuba is the largest of these, followed by Hispaniola, which contains both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The Bermuda Triangle is not in the Caribbean, but in the Atlantic Ocean. Its three points are Miami, United States; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the island of Bermuda. And yes, ships do mysteriously disappear when navigating its waters and planes do plunge without explanation into the sea.

The roundtrip of the world ends back up in North America, consisting of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. There is still a lot of information about world geography to know, but the basics have been covered. Some of the newest additions to the map are East Timor near Indonesia and Kosovo on the Balkan Peninsula, carved out of Serbia. Geography can change from one day to another, so you have to be up to date. So when someone says they are Yugoslavian you can laugh and intelligently remark, "Actually, Yugoslavia is no longer a country."