Week 9: October 26 through 30

Daisy Ross
Oct 26, 2020
9 min read

Updated: Oct 30, 2020

This week, we will talk about Thomas Sankara and the land where he lived.

Monday, October 26

Puzzling Africa

We know we said you’d learn about Thomas Sankara but first it is important to find out more about the lands that influenced him.

Africa is an amazing and rich land. The entire world feeds off of the resources found there. Africa is abundant in gold, oil, diamonds, healing plants, amazing animals, and beautiful and talented people. It’s no wonder Europeans visit the continent in the hundred thousands each year, including during the great Pandemic of 2020.

Thomas Sankara was born in the West coast of Africa but went to school on the large island in the Eastern part of the continent, Madagascar. In his journey, we could imagine how the landscape changed. In the East there are more mountains and the enormous volcano called the Mountain of God by the people for generations.

So how was Africa made so rich?

Pangaea. (PAN JEE YAH)

Pangaea uses the Latin word "Pan" which means "all". Pangaea was the solid landmass that was set at the center of the Earth more than 300 million years ago. There was no other solid land of which scientists are currently aware. It is hypothesized that this supercontinent broke into the smaller continents that we see on our maps today. Interestingly enough, as Pangaea broke apart and the newer continents shifted and drifted across the surface of the Earth, the continent of Africa didn't move quite as much. This allowed the pressure of the continent on the stones beneath it to build up for much longer and develop the precious resources we find on the African continent today.

There was a major rift that happened all over Pangaea. When it occurred, the super continent broke a part. Scientists have drawn this conclusion in different ways. One way an early scientist came up with this idea was by looking at a map of the continents as we know them. Alfred Wegener imagined the continents as a puzzle. He saw that the pieces from South America fit with Africa and Africa with Asia and so on.

Product: Use the PDF below to create a puzzle of the the African continent.

You can also make a puzzle from the world map below.

Print out the pdf
Glue it to a piece of poster board or another firm paper.
Cut off the edges
Draw puzzle lines on the back
Cut and make your puzzle.

Please share your puzzle with FWS on our FB page or in the comments below.

Tuesday, October 27

Change You Can Believe In

Thomas Sankara travelled from West Africa in the land misnamed Upper Volta by the French colonizers to the island of Madagascar in East Africa. These two regions of the continent were vastly different in many ways.

Madagascar is around 8 hours away from Burkina Faso (misnamed Upper Volta at the time of Sankara’s youth). It is an island country, surrounded by the Indian Ocean and the Mozambique Channel. The landforms we see are caused by large plates of Earth being pushed by magma beneath the surface. Sometimes the plates crash into each other and cause the land on the surface to be forced up at the places where they intersect or one plate is forced down while the other rolls over it. We use the word crash loosely here as this collision occurs over hundreds, even thousands of years. Other times the plates move apart. This is whole idea continental drift and the movement of the plates is plate tectonic.

As you know, Africa was at the heart of the Earth’s most recent super continent around 300 million years ago.

“The continents are still moving today. Some of the most dynamic sites of tectonic activity are seafloor spreading zones and giant rift valleys.

In the process of seafloor spreading, molten rock rises from within the Earth and adds new seafloor (oceanic crust) to the edges of the old. Seafloor spreading is most dynamic along giant underwater mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges. As the seafloor grows wider, the continents on opposite sides of the ridge move away from each other. The North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, for example, are separated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The two continents are moving away from each other at the rate of about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) per year.

Rift valleys are sites where a continental landmass is ripping itself apart. Africa, for example, will eventually split along the Great Rift Valley system. What is now a single continent will emerge as two—one on the African plate and the other on the smaller Somali plate. The new Somali continent will be mostly oceanic, with the Horn of Africa and Madagascar its largest landmasses.

The processes of seafloor spreading, rift valley formation, and subduction (where heavier tectonic plates sink beneath lighter ones) were not well-established until the 1960s. These processes were the main geologic forces behind what Wegener recognized as continental drift.” National Geographic

The Great Rift Valley is the birthplace of humanity. It is “the garden of Eden” scientifically speaking. There are still amazing animal life and beautiful stretches of landforms in this area that stretches from Ethiopia to Tanzania.

In the East Africa there are enormous mountains outlying the Great Rift Valley. These mountains are caused by the effects of the Earth’s splitting as the plates drift at its rift. Product: Create a video of yourself doing the Continental Drift in your local park. Remember, you HAVE to represent when you do the Continental Drift! Share it in the Family World School Facebook page or in the comment section below.

Wednesday, October 28

Parts of Words and the Earth!

We’ve learned a lot about the earth and the continents. Today, as we explore more about the Earth, we will also discuss some of Thomas Sankara’s life and experiences.

Thomas Sankara went to military officer school in Madagascar, an island country off of the East Coast of Tanzania. Here he learned about the people of Madagascar’s plight as they rebelled against the French colonizers. Students and other community members formed organizations that were fighting against France’s continued rule over Madagascar.

Sankara’s family were Roman Catholics as were many affluent families under French colonization. They wanted Thomas to become a Catholic priest but he wasn’t interested. He opted for a military career instead. In 1970, at the age of 20, Sankara was sent for officer training in Madagascar, where he witnessed a popular uprising of students and workers that succeeded in toppling Madagascar’s government. He also met his best friend, who became like a brother, Blaise Compaoré there. Before returning to Upper Volta in 1972, Sankara attended a parachute academy in France where he learned more about socialism and Marxism. Then, in 1974, he fought in a war with Mali. Sankara won much public attention and favor for his heroism. He would renounce the war as useless and unjust.

By the early 1980s, Burkina Faso experienced a series of labour union strikes and military coups. Sankara’s military achievements and charismatic leadership style made him a popular choice for political appointments, but his personal and political integrity put him at odds with the leadership of the successive military governments that came to power, leading to his arrest on several occasions. In January 1983, Sankara was selected as the prime minister of the newly formed Council for the Salvation of the People (Conseil de Salut du Peuple; CSP), headed by Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo. This post provided him with an entryway into international politics and a chance to meet with leaders of the nonaligned movement, including Fidel Castro (Cuba), Samora Machel (Mozambique), and Maurice Bishop (Grenada). Sankara’s anti-imperialist stance and grassroots popularity increasingly put him at odds with conservative elements within the CSP, including President Ouédraogo. Sankara was removed as prime minister in May and arrested once again. On August 4th, 1983, his friend, brother, and fellow army mate, Blaise Compaoré, led a group that freed Sankara, overthrew the Ouédraogo regime, and formed the National Council of the Revolution (Conseil National de la Révolution) with Sankara as its president.

There is more to the Earth than what we can see on the surface. In fact, if you were able to hold the Earth in your hand and slice it in half, you'd see that it has multiple layers. But of course, the interior of our world continues to hold some mysteries for scientists. Even as we intrepidly explore other worlds and deploy satellites into orbit, the inner recesses of our planet remains off limit from us.

It may seem like the Earth is made up of one big solid rock, but it's really made up of a number of parts. Some of them constantly moving!

You can think of the Earth as being made up of a number of layers, sort of like an onion. These layers get more and more dense the closer to the center of the earth you get. See the picture below to see the four main layers of the earth: the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core.

Crust

The crust is the thin outer later of the Earth where we live. Well, it looks thin on the picture and it is thin relative to the other layers, but don't worry, we're not going to fall through by accident anytime soon. The crust varies from around 5km thick (in the ocean floor) to around 70km thick (on land where we live called the continental crust). The continental crust is made up of rocks that consist primarily of silica and alumina called the "sial".

Tectonic plates

The tectonic plates are a combination of the crust and the outer mantle, also called the lithosphere. These plates move very slowly, around a couple of inches a year. Where the plates touch each other is called a fault. When the plates move and the boundaries bump up against each other it can cause an earthquake.

Mantle

The next layer of the Earth is called the mantle. The mantle is much thicker than the crust at almost 3000km deep. It's made up of slightly different silicate rocks with more magnesium and iron.

Outer Core

The Earth's outer core is made up of iron and nickel and is very hot (4400 to 5000+ degrees C). This is so hot that the iron and nickel metals are liquid! The outer core is very important to earth as it creates something called a magnetic field. The magnetic field the outer core creates goes way out into space and automatically makes a protective barrier around the earth that shields us from the sun's damaging solar wind.

Inner Core

The Earth's inner core is made up of iron and nickel, just like the outer core, however, the inner core is different. The inner core is so deep within the earth that it's under immense pressure. So much pressure that, even though it is so hot, it is solid. The inner core is the hottest part of the Earth, and, at over 5000 degrees C, is about as hot as the surface of the sun. Today, it’s impossible to reach Earth’s inner core due to the pressure and heat.

The inner core is so hot and has so much pressure against it, it is hypothesized that the energy from this part of the Earth is constantly pushing outward. So much pressure causes hot, melted rock (magma) to bubble upward in the Earth. This magma sometimes causes movement on the Earth’s surface over thousands of years and over only a few minutes. These movements result in continental drift, sea floor spreading, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc.

Product: You may notice while reading that some words are bold. These words have prefixes or suffixes. Write the emboldened words and identify the prefix or suffix for each word. Guess what the words mean based on the word parts.

Thursday, October 29

As the Globe Turns