If you think you have read enough and know all about this Madge Adoption episode then you might listen to this as well.
David has a living father Yohane Banda who can’t afford to raise him but if Madonna wanted and so liked the child she could have easily made it possible for his family to raise him rather than snatching him away from his father.
[Yohane Banda] said: ‘They told me a mzungu (white foreigner) had seen a picture of David and liked him very much.
‘They said she wanted to adopt and take him to America. They said that she would give him a better life.‘At first I wasn’t very sure. I asked if it meant that I would never see him again.
‘They said I would be sent pictures and when David was older he would be able to visit the village.’‘My family and I agreed that this was a very good opportunity for David to get an education and grow up healthy.
‘There were some minor disagreements about his Malawian culture but we said yes.’Yohane had never heard of Madonna, or her raunchy songs. He was told only that she was ‘a very nice Christian lady’.
‘I am a single man with no experience of these things. My in-laws, who live in Zambia, did not want him and my extended family is too poor to take him in.
‘I was scared he would die like my other children so I took him where he could be looked after properly. I felt very sore in my heart, but I could think of no other way.
‘He was one month and seven days old. The orphanage made me sign a letter to show that I was handing him over to their charge, but I suppose deep in my heart I always imagined that when he was better, or I had got another wife, I would go and take him back. I did not think anyone would want to take him away.
‘But I was persuaded by Rev Chipeta. He said that I was to hold fast and not waver in my decision.
‘He said many people would come to the village and tell me things but that I should go ahead and let the woman have my son – that it was the best thing for David’s future…’
Meanwhile Yohane still struggles to come to terms with what he has done. He says he has received no money in connection with the adoption of his child, but there is a sense that this committed Christian, who sang with his late wife in the local church choir, has a niggling suspicion that what has happened is not right.
Certainly he has never behaved like a man who willingly abandoned his son.
For the past nine months he has visited his son whenever he could – regularly cycling the 25 miles from his home in the village to the orphanage along treacherous dirt and stone tracks more suited to rugged four wheel drive vehicles.
He said: ‘I would bring him food from my garden, then sit and play with him for a while. I wanted him to know that I was his father, that I love him very much.
‘He is my only child still living an
d I think of him as a gift from God. He is also the best memory I have left of my wife.’
Madonna actually left Malawi without David, and waited a few days for the paperwork to come through so he could be shipped to her. He flew out on a private jet with a nanny and some bodyguards.
Well she has openly shown that how self-centered and selfish one can be. Malawian human rights groups have been opposing the adoption since then but she was smart enough to remove David from the country so that long legal battle for custody could be avoided.
