Baeba Swamp

Baeba Swamp is thge largest city on the continent of Rilola and among the largest on the planet Teppala. It is legally part of the Ogili empire, but most inhabitants are aboriginal Baebans who are paid by Ogili to be friendly to Ogili instead of siding with the rest of the aboriginal nations (tempom) to thge south. It is a major trading post in both directions: bringing pineapples and palm oil northward into Ogili, and bringing wood and metals south into Tempom.

Government

Despite being nominally part of the Ogili empire and having a huge chunk of the population, Baeba Swamp gets no votes because Ogili is not a democracy. Ogili just needs them to be friendly and not side with any of the other nations that could be even more tempting to them, such as Nokʷ or Pusapom. So Ogili treats Baeba like 1800s Europe treated Africa (Baebans are very dark skinned, and thus could not assimilate or "pretend" to be Ogilians); i.e. they are friendly, but only because they want to use Baeba as a foothold to control even greater areas of territory. Unlike Africa, Baeba and points southward (known as Tempom) is mostly desert that is barely livable for humans both because of the weather and because of dangerous predtaory birds. However,. Baeba is at the conjunctuion of many rivers and thus is more profitable than otyher areas. But even so, most of the food is imported or fished from the

Climate

Hot. Although Teppala is a cold planet, and most Northern Hemisphere locations are cold even compared to Teppala's average, Baeba is on the east coast of a heated shallow sea, making its climate about as warm and humid as Florida at the same latitude. (Baeba is 28N). However, despite the heat and humidity, there is not a great deal of rainfall at the surface ... mostly this happens at high elevations.

Demographics

Immigrants

About 60000 Poswobs live in Baeba Swamp, more than in any one city in their own empire. Thus Baeba could be called the largest Poswob city in the world. But Baeba is very large, about 400000 people in total, so Poswobs in Baeba are a minority, albeit the largest minority. Poswobs in Baeba have a low social status because the economy is very diverse. Poswobs liuving in Baeba, like other minorities in Baeba, cannot hold government posts or jobs in the military or police and generally cannot become rich.

Poswobs have been moving into Baeba for about 700 years now. Prior to that, those leaving the Empire mostly moved northward into Safiz. Unlike most peoples, they are willing to move to places where they are considered an underclass because for the most part life is even worse where they come from (mostly Lypelpyp). In some ways the Poswobs of Baeba have more power than the other Baebans after all because they have representatives in the Poswob government, although the citizens themselves cannot vote ... they only have the representatives who vote in the national legislature. Moreover they generally are in charge of what Pusapom sells to Baeba.

For this reason, not a lot of non-Poswob people move to Baeba. And Baeba doesn't have any native ethnic minorities because they are a rare example of a city founded by aboriginals actually retaining its original population as it grew rather than being conquered by outsiders. In fact, it is the only "aboriginal" major city on the entire continent. Safiz cities are majority aboriginal now, but generally go back to older settlements founded by Ogilians. For this reason, Baeba also has its own language, only distantly (>20000 years) related to the other languages around them suich as Poswa and Goga.

Many Poswobs consider all dark-skinned people to be immigrants from Baeba or simply "baebans", which although not strictly true is a convenient approximation of the truth. It is similar to calling blacks African-Americans. The approximate border of settlement between the Poswob lands and the Tempy/Baeban lands is where the land suddenly becomes flat and low in elevation. However the Poswobs have some land on the south-facing slopes whereas for the most part the Tempys have land all the way up to the summits (similar to India).