11th August: Chad Independence Day

Today is Chad's Independence Day. here are 10 things you may not know about the Republic of Chad.

1. The Republic of Chad is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is slightly smaller than Peru and slightly larger than South Africa, and is the world's 21st-largest country.
2. Its capital and largest city is N'Djamena, which is twinned with Toulouse, France and Stupino, Stupinsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russia.
3. Most of the 10,300,000 population live in the southernmost fifth of the country. There are over 200 different ethnic groups. The main ones are the Sara, Arabs and the nomadic Toubous.
4. It is a very poor country in which 80% of the people live below the poverty line. Civil wars have made it difficult at times for aid to get through.
5. Chad's official languages are French and Arabic, but over 100 languages and dialects are spoken.
6. There are some unusual musical instruments in Chad - the kinde, a type of bow harp; the kakaki, a long tin horn; and the hu hu, a stringed instrument that uses calabashes (gourds) as loudspeakers.
7. The staple food is millet. It is made into balls of paste which are dipped into sauces. Fish is a popular food, too. Drinks include Carcaje, a sweet red tea extracted from hibiscus leaves, and in the south, millet beer.
8. 39% of women are in polygamous marriages. Polygamy is legal and automatically allowed unless spouses have specified at the time of marriage that it is unacceptable to them.
9. Because it is a long way from the sea and has a largely desert climate, Chad is sometimes referred to as the "Dead Heart of Africa".
10. The country's dominant physical structure is a wide basin bounded to the north and east by the Ennedi Plateau and Tibesti Mountains, which include Emi Koussi, a dormant volcano which is 3,414 metres (11,201 ft) above sea level. Lake Chad, after which the country is named, is the remains of an immense lake that occupied 330,000 square kilometres (130,000 sq mi) of the Chad Basin 7,000 years ago.