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W is for Western Sahara

Fast Facts

  • Named for: Part of the Sahara. The Western part.
  • Capital: hard to say
  • Long/Lat: 25 N/13 W, 6000 miles and 13 hours east of Castro Valley
  • Population: 565,000 or 8.5 CVs
  • Size: 105,000 sq mi or 5800 CVs (sparsely populated)
  • Avg temp in April: 77 F/25 C
  • Median household income: GDP per capita is $2,500 but doesn’t necessarily go to the locals.
  • Ethnicity: Berbers
  • Main industries: Fishing. Phosphates. Sustainable energy if Morocco could get in there and build the wind farms.

Western Sahara thinks itself a country. Morocco doesn’t. The border is disputed, as in is there even a border? The indigenous people, the Sahrawis of Western Sahara, think so. The Moroccan don’t, which is why they’ve laid berms–land mines–along one section. We’re in “W” and the world is still cray cray.

Today, technically, Western Sahara is not a country, although it was once. When I was in the 6th grade and memorizing the countries of Africa (see my A-Z inaugural post), it was called Spanish Sahara. Very colonizer-forward. That’s the legacy, of Africa being carved up by the Europeans, after the Islamic Empire carved up Europe and North Africa, and after the Romans carved up Europe, Africa, and Asia, and after Alexander carved up… A country’s borders have always been about the weaponry and the exploitable resources within.

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V is for Vatican City

Fast Facts:

  • Named for: Vagitanus or the vagiti, the cry of a baby (Etruscan, maybe)
  • Capital: The Pope’s house at One Pope Lane
  • Long/Lat: 41.5 N/12.2 E, 6200 miles or 12 hours east of Castro Valley
  • Population: 882 and not a single cardinal more or less. 1% of CV.
  • Size: 0.19 sq mi, 1% of CV.
  • Avg temp in April: 70 F/20 C, very pleasant
  • Median household income: $20,000? but stats not published. Free room and board.
  • Ethnicity: Not published, but likely more diverse than expected. Only one religion, though.
  • Main industries: Proselytizing. Plus the merch!

Vatican City was originally a swamp. It’s located on the less breezy side of the Tiber, near Rome’s original arch enemy, the Etruscans. It was named either for a baby’s cry or for auspices drawn by the way birds fly or the way a liver appeared, which was (ironically) a significant part of Roman religious practices. Still, it was a marsh, dismal and ominous. Like the Bayou–popes were born on the bayou (with apologies to CCR).

Unlike some of these other countries, you probably have heard of it because it’s a Jeopardy question. What’s the smallest country in the world? Vatican City is also a true enclave, a country entirely contained within another country, along with San Marino and Lesotho and almost Eswatini (remember letter E?) It should not seem so strange for Vatican City to be its own country, considering that Rome itself used to be a “country,” not to mention an “empire” that would span more than 40 countries today if it still existed.

Vatican City is wholly inside Rome, which is wholly inside Italy, which is wholly on top of Earth, which … well, keep going and, according to theology, you get to God. Graphic by ImSevan.
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U is for Uruguay

Uruguay on the southeast coast of South America, nestled between Brazil and Argentina. Graphic from worldatlas.

Fast Facts

  • Named for: The full name is the Oriental Republic of Uruguay because it is the country called “bird-river” east of the “bird-river” river. Is that River cubed?
  • Capital: Montevideo
  • Long/Lat: 34.5 S/56.1 E, 6,000 miles east of Castro Valley, 10 hours.
  • Population: 3.5 million or 53 Castro Valleys
  • Size: 68,000 sq mi or 3700 Castro Valleys
  • Avg temp in April: 75 F/22 C, getting cooler since winter is coming in June
  • Median income: $25,000 annual
  • Ethnicity: 86% white, 10% Black, 6% indigenous (White ~ probably mixed)
  • Main industries: Cattle & Sheep, telecom, energy production

Uruguay is the South American country that I always forget. It’s neither land-locked nor mountainous, like Paraguay or Bolivia. It wasn’t the site of ancient pyramids or the discovery of the potato, like Peru. It’s just hanging out there between those giants, Brazil and Argentina. As we’ve seen with many of these small countries, they often act as a buffer zone, a between area that is influenced by its giant neighbors.

The early Uruguay people included extensive settlements built by the Charrúa, Chaná, and Guaraní tribes, whose villages dated back at least 13,000 years. There are barrows called tumuli sprinkled throughout the country, which has rolling hills and greenery. The people lived in lands of plenty, but lacking gold or ores which Europeans sought. When the Spanish and Portuguese came–with they both did–the colonizers focused more on Brazil and Argentina.

Still, they did establish colonies in Uruguay. The first European to get credit was Juan Díaz de Solís. Curiously, there are debates about whether he was Spanish or Portuguese; both countries claim him and spell his name two different ways. One story also suggests that when his ship left home, his wife was found dead, so maybe he was using an alias.

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