As a child growing up in Houston, Isaiah Washington said, his first impressions of Africans were discomfiting TV images of "natives running around in raffia with bones in their noses . . . trying to put Tarzan in a pot."
The 45-year-old African American actor, formerly of "Grey's Anatomy," said his mother never talked of Africa. School never taught him much about his ancestral continent and news stories, he said, projected a place of poverty and pestilence, corruption and war.
Today, however, Washington stands so proud of Africa that he recently became a citizen of Sierra Leone, making him a dual national of that West African country and his native United States. He was inducted as a chieftain in a Sierra Leonean village. He's started a foundation to aid Sierra Leone, contributing nearly $1 million to build a school, restore a hospital and preserve a historic British slave castle on nearby Bunce Island.
Washington's long journey from ignorance about Africa to an impassioned embrace of it was accelerated by a 2005 DNA test that linked him to the Mende people of Sierra Leone. Now, he said, descendants of slaves like him can return to the motherland to help it prosper.
"If we can take our intellects and resources, and reverse the brain drain and help rebuild these countries, we can define our legacies," Washington said.
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Washington reflects renewed interest among African Americans reaching out to Africa, some of them inspired by DNA tests that they believe solve centuries-old puzzles about their origins.
The newly uncovered connections have led to more travel, philanthropic work, business ventures and, as with Washington, efforts to seek dual citizenship.
The trend is expected to accelerate with the presidency of Barack Obama, a son of Kenya and Kansas. His celebrated journey to his ancestral African village in 2006 was beamed around the globe, motivating many to explore their roots, black commentators say.
Particularly since Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities had their DNA tested in a 2006 PBS documentary, African Americans are increasingly using science to supplement oral histories and traditional genealogical research to find their roots, said G. Kofi Annan, a New Jersey-based design and marketing consultant who blogs about African trends.
