Geography Awareness Week 2006

Diversity in Africa

 Postcard Contest Winners

Congratulations to all of our winners for 2006! 

Click here to open a pdf file of the winners or scroll down to see the pictures and text.

FIRST PLACE

The artwork on this postcard is mainly based on rural Ethiopians.  The wheat in the background represents Ethiopia’s economy.  It shows that agriculture is how a lot of rural Ethiopians make money.  The camel is a form of transportation.  Ethiopians don’t use motor vehicles outside of major towns so they either ride animals or walk.  The girl in the picture is walking to travel and the way she is dressed reflects her daily life.  She is dressed in a plain dress because she doesn’t have time to concentrate on her physical appearance.  That’s because she is often performing agricultural tasks and doesn’t need to dress up.  The soccer ball shows the way that all Ethiopians spend their free or recreational time.  A lot of men and boys play soccer and other sports but women and girls do not.

 

The whole postcard shows that Ethiopia is not a very rich or fancy culture.  The land affects the way Ethiopians live.  The Ethiopians have had to form a culture that would fit with the land and their environment in order to survive.   That is how their culture came to be.

 

SECOND PLACE

On my postcard I put three of the major languages in Ethiopia.   I also included some livestock and grain.  They grow coffee and sell it for money.  There are mountains to keep it isolated.  I made a jigsaw puzzle because I thought of culture as a bunch of pieces that are waiting to be put together. 

 

About 55 million people live in Ethiopia.  Only 15% of them live in urban areas.  Ethiopia has been independent for thousands of years too!  Most Ethiopians are either Muslims or Christians, they can’t be both.  A very small number of them practice traditional African religions.

 

Culture is just a bunch of pieces from a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be put together.

 

THIRD PLACE

In Malawi there are six parts of culture:  economy, history, government, language, religion and social groups.  The part of culture I read about most is economy.

 

There is a lot of economy in Malawi.  79% of the economy is agriculture, 16% is services, and 5% of economy is industry.  In Malawi they grow peanuts and sugar cane for cash crops.  In the Shire Highlands, to the south, tea and tobacco are grown on large estates.  Those two things are examples of agriculture.   Agriculture provides more than 90% of exports.  Exports are some of the services.  Services were 16% of the economy.  Finally, there are industries, which brings me to my postcard.  I drew a fishing boat.  I drew that because in Malawi there is a large fishing industry.  There is a large fishing industry because there is a lake that contains over 500 fish species.  That is why I drew the fishing boat at sunset.

 

p.s. did you know that Malawi’s economy depends heavily on foreign aid?

HONORABLE MENTION

Dear Friend,

 

In Africa the people in the jungle live differently than us.  They live in huts.  I’m not sure what they are called but they depend on them.

 

I drew some huts because I want to live in one.  It is my dream to live like Natives around the world.  I want to work hard.  I want to look after myself.