User:Mendelivia

The name Mendelivia was chosen because it is the name of a fictitious country which was used by a group of children in the 1970s and 1980s. A woman, who was training to become a schoolteacher, assembled together two wallets, each containing paper, coloured pens, envelopes, imitation passports and toy money and she gave these wallets as gifts to two of her nephews. Her nephews had to fill in the details in the toy passports and one of the questions in the toy passports asked them what their nationality was. They decided that their nationality, for the purposes of playing with these gifts, was 'Mendelivian'. In time they designed a national flag, stamps and even a national bank for their country. Some of their sisters and cousins joined in and they held elections to decide who should be the president of Mendelivia. Two of the children participating in this game set up their own home-made (hand-written) newspapers which had news items describing the elections and other events relevant to Mendelivia.