Mark Johnson, age 11, of Eugene, Oregon, for his question:

Where is the Ivory Coast?

Traders on old sailing ships referred to a sandy shore along the west of Africa as the Ivory Coast. It was where they called to buy ivory brought down from the inland elephant country. In 1960, this area bordering the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea became an independent, self governing country. It proudly raised its national flag of three vertical stripes    orange, white and green. Its land area of 124,503 square miles about equals that of the state of New Mexico. Almost all its 340 miles of coast line is bordered with sandy beaches. The flat coastal area rises to a mountainous plateau that gives way to grassy savanna prairies in the north.

Ivory Coast is just north of the Equator, along the southern side of the big African hump that bulges way out into the Atlantic. The new country is home to more than four million people. At present, the population has 60 different dialects  ¬but the proud owners of a new homeland soon find ways to communicate with each other. The capital city is the port of Abidjan. Trading ships now call at Ivory Coast ports to pick up cargoes of lumber from the tropical forests and coffee, cocoa, bananas, rubber and pineapples grown on the farms and plantations.