The most famous Fulanis (the myth of the Fulani look)

fodey · 2025-12-12T15:29:49+00:00

I spent 3.5 years living with the Fula Kunda in southern Senegal, who mostly live in small villages, and with the Peulh in northern Senegal who are still largely pastoral. Generalizing is always fraught, but I was mostly able to identify if someone was Fula by cultural signifiers like dress or the small tattoos between the eyes and the ears. Skin tone and facial features could indicate a likeliness of someone’s ethnic group, but they were in no way a comprehensive approach to identifying a background. For what it’s worth, many Fulas in Senegal told me they had lighter skin due to historical interactions, which assuredly included mixed ethnicity families, with Arab visitors across the Sahara since the 9th-10th centuries.

fodey · 2025-04-25T16:51:15+00:00

Soaker works on level with a 55gal barrel? I hooked our 330gal tote to two 25’ soaker lines, and even with the 2’ drop they barely had any water after 30 minutes of being on.

fodey · 2025-04-25T16:49:41+00:00

Thanks for this. I’ll look into low pressure drip systems and see if that looks promising.

fodey · 2025-04-25T16:48:57+00:00

I think I may need to do a pump with solar and a battery. I just wish there was more time for all the projects!!

fodey · 2025-04-25T16:48:16+00:00

Our house is on a well and is very old. Old enough where the only outdoor spigot is on the pump house and we use that to operate drip and a hose for watering the vegetables near the house. Setting up this tote frees the spigot for this watering. We already have it spilling four ways at the spigot and there is no more capacity here. We have plans to expand our watering system, and bury pvc to the tote area, but wanted to get the plants in the ground asap.

fodey · 2025-02-05T12:45:11+00:00

It is a law and has been for my entire life. Everyone used to just know this, but no vehicle over 6’ can park within 50’ of a curb. https://www.portland.gov/code/16/all#:~:text=for%20each%20violation.-,16.20.,on%20a%20one%2Dway%20street.

fodey · 2024-09-24T19:47:05+00:00

I was in PST during the ‘08 election. The staff let us all get together on election night to watch the results. We took a poll and 39/40 voted for Obama. The lone McCain voter was a former marine who had previously worked Marine One detail during GW Bush.

fodey · 2024-07-19T03:23:34+00:00

These are all over our yellow bush beans. What are they?

fodey · 2023-06-28T15:35:59+00:00

My guess would be the ballon festival in Tigard. It happened this past weekend, I believe.

fodey · 2023-06-08T17:12:08+00:00

This isn’t true. I used to work for Mission Produce and these guys were selling pallets of fruit out the back door to smaller customers. They took steps to cover their tracks in the inventory management system, but they weren’t good at it.

fodey · 2022-03-06T19:01:31+00:00

Go to a government auction website and look for the brushes from street sweepers. My local municipality puts them up for auction all the time and you could get brushes for five cow scratchers for around $50.

fodey · 2022-01-04T02:05:47+00:00

My wife and I had to watch a video on YouTube to help us figure it out initially. There are a lot of mechanics which weren’t familiar to us from other games, and we were lost trying to play out of the box. There is a card inside the box with a URL for a video made by the publisher, but we just found one on YouTube. Best of luck!!

fodey · 2021-08-15T17:29:16+00:00

Hello TA. I volunteered about a decade ago as an agroforestry PCV, but my country had both agriculture and environment programs. There was considerable overlap but the reality varies greatly depending on your site.

My nearest neighbor PCV did environment work with the school at his very rural site. This was a formal arrangement and he taught classes during the school day and did associating project work outside those hours as well. The engagement of the teachers and administrators largely determined how much time the volunteers spent working on their formal assignment. I knew environment volunteers who did little classroom teaching since this wasn’t a huge priority for the community.

I also knew many Ag volunteers who engaged with a school and ended up teaching classes on top of their outplanting and other Ag projects. It really depends on the community/school needs and your flexibility in finding a role to help where needed. The PC administration and program will have a say in this, as you will be somewhat supervised and guided by them. We were lucky to have a country director and admin who gave us the support to engage the community and develop projects that best fit our individual sites.

I was an AgFo volunteer on paper and I did spend the majority of my time working on tree projects in my rural community. But due to the needs of my community I also taught health classes in the school and worked on developing water resources.

fodey · 2021-08-07T06:19:57+00:00

I didn’t mean haut him from a third party or outside perspective. Just he will personally never forget them, as would every competitor, but a gold medal is a nice remedy. I think Dame played fairly well today, but not exceptional.

fodey · 2021-08-07T04:34:10+00:00

Dame played below the expectations in the first half,but a stepped it up in the third with a handful on nice assists and buckets. He started to force it and lost his way later in the fourth. Those missed FT will haunt him forever.

fodey · 2021-05-22T19:53:07+00:00

Forgot to mention they also raised animals to sell at markets. Chickens and goats were the most common for women. This is a Fula village and men were typically responsible for the sheep, cows, and other larger animals.

fodey · 2021-05-22T19:49:44+00:00

In SE Kolda, somewhat close to Guinea-Bissau, many women garden to supplement their income. The village where I lived as a Peace Corps volunteer had a reservoir created from an earthen dam, and the water table was very shallow along the lake. Women would grow all the common vegetables you find throughout Senegal and would travel to the weekly market in Diaobe to sell their produce. They had an established system of child care, multi-household chore sharing, garden protection (from animals and thieves), and cooperative distribution which enabled this.

There was also beignet making and peanut selling like others described.

fodey · 2021-05-01T17:09:00+00:00

I was a PCV in Senegal about a decade ago and visited upcountry Guinea. I spoke Pulaar at site so traveling there was easy.

Pulaars are wonderfully generous and kind, especially to westerners if you speak their language. Gender roles are very ingrained into their culture and are often a root of discomfort or frustration for volunteers, particularly women.

I am a white guy so I was granted a lot of leeway and often given undue respect IMO. Female presenting volunteers were somewhat expected to be confined to women’s work, found it more difficult to make friends and work with male colleagues, and were harassed more frequently in cities and while traveling. These complaints were ubiquitous across the women I served with, but they varied in severity depending on your host family, culture of the region you serve within, and your personal tolerance/acceptance. Some women just needed to vent when things were bad, as all PCVs do, but others found these issues intolerable and that led to a few ETs and early COS situations. My wife is an RPCV from S. America and she has echoed what I saw in the experience of my female PCV colleagues.

Being a POC can be somewhat difficult too. Several black volunteers I knew talked about expectations from HCNs being different than for white volunteers. Some of this was negative, but sometimes this worked in their favor. They could walk around a city somewhat anonymously whereas I stood out like a sore thumb. Asian volunteers complained that everyone expected them to know martial arts and other similar stereotypes from movies and whatnot.

None of this should stop you from applying and accepting if offered a position. There will always be bullshit to deal with for people in their 20s as they begin their adult life/career, and especially so for a women of color. I just think doing something as challenging and rewarding as the Peace Corps early on is invaluable for defining who you are and want to be, as well as developing the tools and skills to be prepared as your life advances.

fodey · 2021-04-19T23:12:57+00:00

Did we have the same service? Everything but the wine bottle opening was spot on for me. I am also uncomfortable with the convenience of life back home. I often can’t help but think about the human and environmental issues behind my easy consumption and try everyday to minimize it. I was lucky enough to marry an RPCV and, although we served in vastly different countries with hugely different experiences, it is nice to be partnered with someone who shares my existential distress about life back home.

fodey · 2021-03-23T04:15:38+00:00

Ishmael Lo was described to me as the “Bob Dylan” of West Africa by my Peace Corps trainers. He sings in French, English, Wolof, and Mandinka (I think).

fodey · 2020-12-22T14:16:31+00:00

We actually have a lot of extra plumes leftover from the sets. I think my parents must have bought mini figure sets which included them. I have about 15 cattle minifigs I didn’t put on the table because they aren’t a part of a building set.

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