Vickie Remoe Institute of Digital Communications

Idris Elba is coming to Sierra Leone…FINALLY!!!!

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Sierra Leonean Ghanaian Actor, Idris Elba (c) Independent

I have been waiting and praying for 10 years now that something would touch Idris Elba and he would wake up one day and feel a strong desire to connect with Sierra Leone. 

Idris was recently interviewed on the Guardian by Afua Hirsch and here is what he has to say about his plans for Sierra Leone:

Elba’s background is at once diverse and typical. Now 38, he grew up in east London to a Ghanaian mother and a Sierra Leonean father. His parents met in Sierra Leone, his mother having moved there when she was 12.
I tell Elba that my mother is also from Ghana, and we enter into the ritual so typical among British descendants of Africans, sharing and comparing stories of our parents, asking each other whether we can understand the languages, how many times we have been back, proclaiming earnest intentions to visit more. But Elba, whose Rwanda-based film Sometime in April marked his first-ever trip to the continent, tells me with deep shame that he has never visited either Ghana or Sierra Leone. “It’s embarrassing. I have to go,” he says, shaking his head. “There are plans, serious plans! I can’t wait.”
Typically for a man with such a strategic approach, Elba’s agenda is more complicated than just showing up with a suitcase and shades. “There’s a Sierra Leonean saying that you don’t walk into someone’s house with your two long arms,” he explains, and then translates it into Krio – the Sierra Leoneon creole he learned growing up: “Yu no for go na pass in us wit you long arm.” He says the words carefully, with the air of someone who has absorbed a language, but never used it much. “I want to go to Sierra Leone with something – whether it’s some sort of contribution to healthcare, or to the entertainment industry. My cousin is a nurse; we are talking about opening a clinic.”
Sierra Leone’s breathtaking landscape – with some of the most beautiful beaches in Africa – is also one of the world’s best-kept secrets, and Elba has plans to use it. “I would really like to open a studio in Sierra Leone. It’s a country that can actually house and look like many parts of the world,” he says. “If I could somehow encourage a film community to use Sierra Leone as the studio in West Africa to make films there, that would be really cool.”

Read the full article HERE

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