Colombian Lebanese pop star Shakira on Friday visited the village in Lebanon where her paternal grandmother was born, an AFP journalist said. “Hello Tannourine, thank you, I am happy to be here!”, the 41-year-old singer said in Arabic during a visit under high security to the village of Tannourine in Lebanon’s mountainous north. Accompanied by local officials, Shakira visited a nature reserve that grows cedar trees — Lebanon’s national emblem — and planted two saplings. To mark the occasion, a small patch of the reserve was named “Shakira Mubarak” — after one of the singer’s family names, Tannourine’s mayor Bahaa Harb said.

On Friday evening, she will kick off the Cedars International Festival in Lebanon, a concert set to attract 13,000 people. This is Shakira’s third visit to the country. Her first visit came in 2003 and she returnec in 2011 for a concert. The artist is in Lebanon with her two sons.

The singer and performer arrived amid tight security to the mountainous town of Tannourine from which her grandparents immigrated to the United States, and where her father William Mebarak Chadid was born and later immigrated at the age of five with his parents to Colombia. Shakira planted two cedar trees in the Cedar forest conservatory in the town – one tree carried her name and the other her family name – surrounded by local and diplomatic officials representing both countries, Lebanon and Colombia.