The angel and the sainted mother

UESday evening on Oprah Winfrey’s show (on Hallmark Channel, might have been a delayed telecast), singer Madonna was interviewed from her London home. In October last year, Madonna brought home to London a 14-month-old boy from Malawi and all hell broke loose.

According to newspaper reports, Madonna was doing charity work in Malawi, constructing an orphanage and producing a documentary, when he saw little David. She wanted to adopt him, had her lawyer in Malawi file the papers and brought the child back to London. What transpired between the filing of the adoption papers and the return to London is now the subject of media speculations, accusations and involvement of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, consisting of 67 human rights NGOs in Malawi.

According to the HRCC, rules were bent to accommodate Madonna, being the wealthy celebrity that she was. According to the press, David’s father did not give his informed consent to the adoption because he was made to sign documents that he did not fully understand.

In Oprah’s show, Madonna admitted that during the tribal hearing on the adoption, she and David’s biological father, Yohane Banda, had to communicate through an interpreter. Below is a portion of the transcript from the show:

Madonna says that her critics don’t really understand how the Malawian adoption process works if they believe she used status to speed up the process of adopting David. “I assure you it doesn’t matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa,” Madonna says. “There are no adoption laws in Malawi. And I was warned by my social worker that because there were no known laws in Malawi, they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along. And she did say to me, ‘Pick Ethiopia. Go to Kenya. Don’t go to Malawi because you’re just going to get a hard time’.’’

What is NOT in debate is that Malawi’s adoption rules require that the prospective adoptive (foreign) parents live with the child IN MALAWI for 18 months— called the interim adoption—prior to any final adoption. It is not denied that this was not followed in Madonna’s case because she brought David back to London with her with the intention of living out the 18-month period in London under the supervision of a London-based social worker.

Over at Nouse, an award-winning newspaper produced by the students of the University of York, Rachel Halloway visited Malawi after having worked there in 2005 when she spent some time at the Home of Hope orphanage where Madonna found David. Below is a portion of Halloway’s account of her return to the orphanage.

My return to Home of Hope this summer finds little change at first glance; groups of girls chatter amongst themselves as I enter the compound, the youngest crying out, excited by the presence of an Azungu (white person). Life goes on the same as ever; the children rise at 5.30 for their morning devotions, eat at the same times and still giggle and laugh at the smallest things. As I settle back into life at the orphanage, I talk to one of the eldest, Chipiliro Chimtika, 19. Chipiliro, which means patience, is an intense character. Despite having lived at the orphanage for most of his life, he has a remarkably positive outlook and a great awareness of politics. It is he who eventually brings up the subject of the adoption.

He asks me how British people reacted to David’s adoption and is surprised when I inform him of the backlash. I ask how many days Madonna stayed at the orphanage before deciding on a child to adopt. He laughs shortly, and there is an awkward pause.

“Days?” he asks, somewhat incredulously. “She was here for just over two hours.” Malawians, for whom even a greeting can take up to 20 minutes, find this hurried western attitude confusing, if not inexcusably rude. She certainly didn’t abide by the law which states that foreign visitors must remain in Malawi for 18 months before officially adopting a Malawian-born child.

A lot of people, Oprah Winfrey and her live audience included, found Madonna’s move to adopt a sick boy from a poverty-stricken country to be praise-worthy. While no one can deny that someone as wealthy as Madonna can provide material comforts, including health care, to a boy who may not have survived childhood in Malawi, personally, I am curious as to whether there is really more to this brand of charity started by Angelina Jolie.

There is no dearth of unwanted and abandoned children in the United States, Madonna’s and Jolie’s country of birth, or the United Kingdom, where Madonna now resides. What is it about adopting unwanted children from a poor country? Why is that more attractive than adopting children in their own country who are suffering from the same neglect? It isn’t realistic to say that in America, orphans, runaways and the abandoned are taken care of by the government. I mean, there’s no contest between social welfare and a real home.

Years ago, when Angelina Jolie adopted her first child, a Filipina who has been living in the United States for years posted a comment in my Web log that it must have something to do with the tax incentives. Adopting a child from a foreign country means a more generous tax break for American citizens. Is that what this is all about? Is that why there’s an outpouring of millions of dollars to finance charity projects in poor countries? Because, in the end, it turns out to be more profitable because of tax incentives?

From one perspective, even if the tax breaks are part of the motivation, they should be irrelevant. Perhaps, we really just ought to view the actions of people like Madonna and Angelina Jolie based on the good that they are able to do especially for the children that they have adopted. Which brings us to the question of whether such adoptions are a social concern, a concern of the nations of the adoptive parents and adopted child, or simply the private affair of the prospective parents, the child and the child’s biological parents and/or relatives. This question goes right into the propriety of the involvement of the press (which has really turned the issue into a circus) and human rights groups in the adoption of David Banda. Do they have a right to interfere? Should they have any say at all? Whose rights are they really trying to protect?

From the point of view of the adoptive mothers like Madonna and Jolie, I can believe that they only have the best of intentions. It is not easy to look at a sick child and not have one’s heart broken especially when one knows that there is not much of a future where he’s at. Whatever may be the root motivation—compassion, pity, lucrative tax incentives, or all of that—these women are in a position to help and they are willing to give it. Of course, I am not in any position to address the issue of their competence as parents. I wouldn’t know if they are. Is their willingness to help, and their capacity to provide material comfort, the be-all and end-all of these international adoptions?

On the other hand, with claims that deep-rooted corruption in the Malawian government enabled Madonna to fast-track the adoption and bend the rules, it does leave an impression that, somehow, children from poor countries are no different from any piece of merchandise so easy to appropriate as one’s own if one has the money and the stature.

What is more important—the adopted children or the pride of a nation?