Freetown (AFP)
British actor, director and DJ Idris Elba became a citizen of Sierra Leone and received a diplomatic passport from President Julius Maada Bio on Friday, the first time he visited his father's country of origin, a correspondent reported. of AFP.
"It is a great emotion and a great honor for me to become a citizen of my father's country, it is a great honor for our family," said the star during a presidency ceremony, speaking in a mixture of standard English and krio, local Creole.
"On behalf of this country, I have the privilege of officially welcoming you as a brother and giving you this diplomatic passport," said the president.
Idriss Elba, the only son of a car factory worker from Sierra Leone and a mother from Ghana, arrived Wednesday evening in Freetown with his wife since 2019, Sabrina Dhowre.
He recalled Friday that it was his first visit to his father's country of origin. He recalled the memory of his father and uncle leaving Sierra Leone for London in the 1960s and 1970s "with only two bags and their prayers". His father died in 2013. But his uncle was indeed present at the ceremony, among the Sierra Leonean ministers.
He cited the troubled history of this country and his personal journey to explain why he had waited until he was 47 years old to come. But he assured that this visit would not be the last.
"It is my heart that I bring to Sierra Leone, and what is in my heart is determination," he said.
He expressed his desire to help the country, one of the poorest in the world. He plans to build an eco-responsible tourist complex on the island of Sherbro, with heavenly beaches, and a visit was included in the program of his stay, according to the Ministry of Tourism. He will spend Christmas in the country, according to Sierra Leonean officials.
Revealed in 2002 in the criminal TV series, "The Wire", knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2015, Idris Elba acted in Hollywood super-productions like "Thor" and "Avengers", and embodied the icon of the fight anti-apartheid, Nelson Mandela, in "Mandela: A long way to freedom". He is also a successful rapper and was named in 2018 "sexiest living man" by People magazine.
The Sierra Leonean president has made the wish that the star helps his country to dissociate its image from the traffic of diamonds and the Ebola virus which hard hit between 2014 and 2016.
Nearly 20 years after a civil war that killed some 120,000 people, Sierra Leone is still struggling to recover and is betting on ecotourism to become a destination of choice again. At the start of the year, it made the chimpanzee its new national emblem.
"We are counting on your network to let the rest of the world know that the little country they have only heard of because of the wars, Ebola and these terrible stories is a new Sierra Leone," said the President.
© 2019 AFP