By Chris and Rosie
Dec 18, 2020
Sarah Culberson didn’t start searching for her biological family until she was 28 and when she found them, it changed her life forever. She was adopted as a baby by a white family in West Virginia and she didn’t know anything about her birth parents and in her quest to find them, she learned that she’s African royalty.
Her biological uncle called with the news that her family is a ruling Mende tribe in Bumpe, Sierra Leone. Sarah is considered a mahaloi, the child of a paramount chief and that makes her the princess of the village. Her mother died when she was 11, but her father and brother are still in the village and she made her first visit to Sierra Leone in 2004 to meet them.