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Building Frustration
When she told Judy that she was ready to try to track down her birth mother, Judy divulged the one piece of information she’d kept from her: The woman had died ten years earlier, of cervical cancer. Disheartened, Sarah found herself hesitant to then pursue a search for her biological father.In 2001 she moved to Los Angeles and landed some bit parts in films and TV. Between gigs, she taught dance to seventh and eighth graders. But as she reached her late 20s, she began to feel a building frustration. Whenever she grew close to a man, her fear of abandonment drove her to sabotage the relationship.
Early in 2004, Sarah took a leadership training course. During one session, the instructor asked, “Where are you holding back in your life? Tell the person sitting next to you.”
Sarah turned toward an old friend named Art. “I’m terrified of finding my biological father,” she confessed. Art assured her that the search could bring her peace and said he knew a private investigator who could locate her father for less than $100.
The detective, after just three hours of sleuthing, turned up a Joseph Kposowa in Maryland. Sarah labored over an introductory note and nervously sent it off. Soon afterward, she got a phone call from a woman with a lilting accent. “Sarah? This is Evelyn, your auntie. I was there when you were born.”
Sarah broke down in sobs. Once she’d composed herself, she learned that this Joseph was actually her uncle. He then got on the phone and asked, “Do you know you are a princess?”
Sarah, he explained, belonged to a ruling family of the Mende tribe in southern Sierra Leone, a nation of six million on Africa’s Atlantic coast. Her grandfather had ruled a chiefdom with 36,000 subjects based in the village of Bumpe. When the old man died, Sarah’s father could have nominated himself for the office, but he opted to keep his job as headmaster of the local high school. Another uncle was now chief.
The information made Sarah’s head spin. But it wasn’t until her father called, two weeks later, that she began to understand its full significance.
While Sarah was attending school and starting her career, Joseph Konia Kposowa was surviving one of Africa’s most brutal civil wars. Between 1991 and 2002, guerrillas of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—many of them abused children or young teenagers—sowed terror across Sierra Leone. An estimated 50,000 people were killed; thousands lost limbs to the machete-wielding rebels.
Joseph had started a new family before the war began. In 1994, when the insurgents entered Bumpe, he fled with his wife, their two young children and a handful of relatives. The group spent four years hiding in nearby towns, crammed into small houses with dozens of other refugees.
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