By Allison Hamburger

An adopted woman who searched her roots and discovered she has the status equivalent to a princess of a village in Sierra Leone spoke to the Black History Assembly Feb. 16.

Accompanied by two African drummers, actress and philantrophist Sarah Culberson began her presentation with a brief perfomance of African dance, as the audience clapped along.

Culberson was adopted at the age of one to a Caucasian family in West Virginia and spent her childhood trying to fit in. She did not discover her heritage until she was an adult.

She described the process to find, speak to and later visit her birth father, a high school principal in Bumpe, in West Africa.

Her uncle is the chief of Bumpe, a village recovering from an 11-year civil war.

“Those were the longest two weeks of my life,” Culberson said of the time waiting for her father to contact her. She had been afraid to contact him, thinking he might have intentionally abandoned her as a baby.  After speaking to him, she made plans to visit him.

She founded the Kposowa Foundation to help rebuild her father’s school.

Culberson concluded with a message to follow your dreams in spite of real or perceived obstacles.