Yesterday's pincushion, today's secret agent

Sorry about missing yesterday's post. I was having fun getting shots for Typhoid and Hepatitas A. Yesterday's belated fact is this: vaccines needed for Africa are expensive, and numerous! Last week I received my Tetanus shot. I have yet to receive my Yellow Fever vaccine. I feel like a very large, sore pincushion. On top of these vaccines, I still need to fill my anti-malaria prescription. I feel like my immune system is going to be invincible, and only kryptonite can bring me down! I also feel like my bank account is NOT invincible right now! Woohoo!

Okay, today I borrowed some facts from the CIA, because I really wanted a basic overview of the country. I have all these pockets of knowledge from the last 9 posts, but no real broad, general knowledge. So today I'm going to play secret agent and lay down some CIA facts.
Africa's population, as of July 2011, is 49,004,031. The ethnic groups of South Africa are as follows: 79% of the population is black African, 9.6% is white, 8.9% is colored and 2.5% is Indian/Asian.
The life expectancy for the total population is 49 years. That seems incredibly low to me, considering that the American life expectancy is 78 years of age. This probably has something to do with the fact that the HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate is 17.8%, and the number of people living with HIV/AIDS is 5.6 million. There are 310,000 deaths a year from HIV/AIDS. To help put this in perspective, the estimated number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks was around 2, 819. The total number of U.S. soldiers killed during the entire Vietnam War was around 58,000. The American Civil War, which is considered the deadliest war in American History, resulted in 620,000 casualties over a time period of FOUR YEARS way back in the 1800s when medical care was not so hot. In today's world with today's modern medicine, and in just ONE YEAR, 310,000 people in South Africa die a year just from HIV/AIDS alone.  In comparison with the entire world, South Africa is the number one country with people living with HIV/AIDS, and is also ranked the number one country with people dying from HIV/AIDS.
The South African Flag is the only national flag to display six colors as part of its primary design. The sideways "Y" stands for the "convergence of diverse elements within South African society, taking the road ahead in unity". Black, yellow and green are found on the flag of the African National Congress, white, red and blue are the coloris in the flags of the Netherlands and the UK, whose settlers rule South Africa during the colonial era.

The national anthem of South Africa is called "National Anthem of South Africa" (very creative). It was adopted in 1994 and is a combination of "N'Kosi Sikelel' iAfrica (God Bless Africa) and "Die Stem van Suid Afrika (The Call of South Africa), which were respectively the anthems of the non-white and white communities under apartheid. The lyrics contain a mixture of Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English.

Here are the lyrics:
Sounds the call to come together,
And united we shall stand,
Let us live and strive for freedom
In South Africa our land.


Okay, I'm tired of being a secret agent. Cheetah time - let's talk about cheetah society. Female cheetahs are loners. Males, on the other hand, are often (but not always) social and may group together for life. Often they group with their brothers from their litter, but if there is only one male cub in a litter then two or three lone males may form a coalition. A coalition is six times more likely to obtain an animal territory than a lone male. These males are very territorial, choosing territory where several female cheetahs' home ranges overlap. Coalitions will do their very best to maintain territories to find females with whom they can mate.