Fula Connection?!

Ever since reading Maya Angelou's "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes", I have always wanted to someday travel to mainland Africa and find some people who looked like me. In her book, Ms Angelou travel's to Ghana in the 60's and visits a village where she was immediately embraced as a lost member because she had many of the features associated with that tribe.

While getting on an elevator the other day, I ran into three women and baby. Immediately, two of the women started asking me if this was my real hair, am I mixed, etc. Since moving to the DC area, I've gotten used to the "What are you?" questions. So, immediately went into my "My family is from Cape Verde, off the coast of Senegal..." spiel and explained that it's a former Portuguese colony, yadda, yadda, yadda.

They told me that they were Fula from Gambia, they hadn't heard of Cape Verde, but were very familiar with Senegal. Then one of the women told me that I resemble her mother and had a lot of the features of the Fula people. When looking online at pictures of Fula people I am immediately struck at the resemblance in features between many Cape Verdeans and the Fula's.

Maybe I will have my Maya Angelou moment, after all!

I've added some pictures of my family, people from Cape Verde and Fula's of different West African countries.

My mother

Fula child

My Great Grandmother