This week we are going to West Africa to visit the landlocked country of Burkina Faso. It is bounded by Mali, Niger, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo. Its name roughly translates to “Land of the Honest People” J The capital, Ouagadougou, translates literally to “You are welcome here at home with us”!
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This week, we are showcasing Sri Lanka, a South Asian island country. Sri Lanka is located in the Indian Ocean and is separated from India by the Palk Strait, a 40-mile inlet. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is the country’s legislative capital, and Colombo its largest city and center of commerce.

This week we travel to South America to visit Chile, one of the longest and narrowest countries in the world. One theory of the origin of the name “Chile” is that it came from the indigenous Mapuche word “chilli”, which means “where the land ends” or “the deepest point of the Earth”. Another interpretation is it came from the Mapuche imitation of a bird call, “cheele cheele”.

This week we celebrate Mali, the largest country in West Africa. It is surrounded by land on all sides, with Niger to the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire to the south, Guinea to the south-west, Senegal and Mauritania to the west, and Algeria to the north.

Yui Tsuzuki arrived in Durham six months ago with her husband, who is a visiting scholar at the Duke Law School. They call Japan home. In the following interview, Yui shares about her experiences as an International Spouse in the U.S.
How did you feel when you first arrived in the United States? What surprised you?

This week we’re traveling to Southeast Asia to visit Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populated country!

This week, we received a request from a member of our undergraduate international student community. As the only Gambian undergrad at Duke, he suggested that we highlight the flag of the Republic of the Gambia. We thought it was a great idea!

Zimbabwe is set in south-central Africa, between two of the well-known African rivers, the Limpopo and the Zambezi. It won its independence in 1980.
Zimbabwe’s former president, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, was one of the oldest and longest-serving leaders of a non-royal country in the world. He has served as the leader of Zimbabwe for the past 36 years. He was succeeded in 2017.

The Republic of the Philippines is an archipelago in Southeast Asia located between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The nation is made up of more than 7,641 islands, the largest of which is Luzon. Both the Manila, the capital, and Quezon City, the most populous city, are located on Luzon.

Siddharth Kawadiya is a PhD student studying Environmental Engineering. Following a suggestion from his advisor in India, he decided to come to the U.S. in pursuit of more opportunities in his field. Siddharth has been working with Professor Marc Deshusses in the Pratt School of Engineering’s Sanitation Solutions Department. He started off with only a year-long thesis back in 2015, but ended up enjoying his time here and chose to extend it. Now, he is in his fourth year at Duke!