How many of you like Geography? Or World Politics? This year, I've been alphabetically studying and going through all the UN recognised countries in the world: the country's location, its capital, the flag, brief history, physical geography, and a few recent events that have happened there. It's been almost 6 months since I started this activity, and I can visibly see how it has affected the way I perceive the world and its various cultures. And therefore, I highly recommend this to every single one who happens to be reading the editorial.
I know what you're thinking - "How does one start? How do I go about?" It's really not as complicated as it might seem, and I'll gladly mention below my ways of studying every country in the world:
1) Have you heard of the Youtube Channel "GeographyNow" ? Check them out, it's a brilliant geography resource where the host talks about each country in the world in part-by-part video format. They're at the moment doing all UN recognised countries in an alphabetical order, and have reached El Salvador. Each country would have two corresponding videos: 1) A general 5-6 min video about the country 2) a flag segment of the respective country (this was a new feature as the previous videos had the flag's breakdown in the general video itself). Do let me know if you guys already watch Barby's videos! It's such an underrated channel, and I feel like the content they create is too good to not be popular. They're short, funny videos and you don't have to be a huge geography nerd to be able to understand their videos as they're very preliminary and made for all age groups.
(First episode of GeographyNow - Afghanistan)
2) GeographyNow would obviously take a lot of time to reach Zimbabwe, so don't limit your knowledge to that channel itself! There are various other awesome YouTube channels focusing on Geography and World Politics like WonderWhy, CGP Grey, Seeker Daily, The Young Turks, LastWeekTonight, KnowledgeHub, etc. Let me know if you're aware of any more Youtube channels pertaining to the aforementioned topics!
3) Flags are fun! And kind of very hard too, to be honest. But extremely fun nonetheless. I'm a huge flag nerd and I absolutely LOVE playing online flag quizzes when I'm bored. For a beginner, I'd recommend the app QuizUp as their quizzes also provide a few facts along with the picture of the flag, so it's comparatively easier to remember. Every flag has a story (God that sounds cheesy), so look into the origins of the flag and read up on how and why it was designed that way. Certain colours mean certain things, and thoroughly going through all of that not only helps you to remember your flags well, but also makes it easier to learn about the past struggles if any, the country's main religion, and whether they were ever ruled by any other country - if you study the timeline of flags of the said country. After a bit of basic flag knowledge, you could also watch other people on Youtube doing these quizzes themselves. It becomes more engaging and whilst they are doing those quizzes, they're comments while guessing a flag will help you remember them too! It's all about association.
4) Surround yourselves with maps, either virtually or physically. Keep going through a particular continent's map everyday and try identifying all the countries. It will be very hard at first if you're an absolute beginner, but don't be intimidated! I kind of make this a bit more fun for myself by trying to think of a random fact while writing down the country's name. For example: Azerbaijan -> world's largest KFC, Finland -> free education, Bhutan -> Gross National Happiness, Liechtenstein -> largest producer of false teeth, Barbados -> Rihanna, etc. Check out this website (http://lizardpoint.com/geography/asia-quiz.php) if you're more comfortable studying virtually. Or you could go to a bookstore or library and ask for old maps and then correct them yourselves (which is something I highly recommend). They're very easy to find and very cheap as well as no one really would want to buy older editions of maps now.
5) This is something I haven't done yet, but I'll mention it here nonetheless. So there's this awesome British author who read 1 book from every country in the world! And she has made an awesome list which you guys could check out. Just google search 'Ann Morgan reading the world' and you shall find her blog in the search results. I think it's a great way to understand a country's culture by reading a piece of work by the author of the said country. You could also do that with movies or music! Here's a TED talk by the author, where she talks about how she went about doing this:
6) Start reading up on current affairs! Newspapers, literary journals, political websites, etc. Start talking to people who are into Geography. You could either do that by going on Omegle.com and putting in geography or politics as your interest (Note: Form your own political opinions) or you could look out for pen-pals! Pen-pals are a great way to learn more about a country. I also like to collect postcards/stamps/commemorative coins from various countries.
That's about it, I suppose! I don't want to bombard you with a lot of resources and tips, so I'll just end here. Let me know if you guys have any other tips to learn geography down below in the comments! And of course, have fun reading the rest of the magazine :)
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Future Words of Yesterday: Issue #9
Non-FictionSeptember Issue's Feature Theme: Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Cover by @clarkethevirus
