There are more and more and more and more of us...

in the world. It's estimated that by the end of October, there will be 7 billion human beings on this planet.

According to the same Toronto Star article, and Wikipedia, we hit the 6 billion mark in 1999. Twelve years seems like a very short time to add a billion people.

When are we expected to hit 8 billion? 2027.

"“The world is currently in the midst of the greatest demographic upheaval in human history,” says David Bloom, professor of economics and demography at the Harvard School of Public Health."--Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star

Crayons and Mama Squirrel noticed something strange about population as well. In the Mission Monde French workbook, Crayons was asked to find the population of Burundi. She clicked on a couple of websites, and this is what she found: a 2009 estimate of 8,303,000 2009; and a July, 2011 count of 10,216,190.

The teacher's manual for the course, published in 2006 and re-edited in 2008, gives the population as 6,370,609.

Either someone miscounted, or the population of tiny little Burundi, one of the ten poorest countries in the world, is growing exponentially. WikiAnswers seems to agree with that fact, but we still don't have a clear answer as to why. We guessed that it might be an influx of refugees from famine-stricken areas, but that didn't seem logical either. Second guess: that it's just what the Toronto Star article is talking about, more babies born in the poorest parts of the world.

I don't pretend to have answers. I just read the papers. And the teacher's manual.