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.
Continue reading “W is for Western Sahara”