Peasant farmer Yohane Banda is speaking publicly about the process which led to his one-year-old son David being adopted by the pop-star Madonna.Banda, who is nearly illiterate, says he knew nothing of the singer's interest in his son initially, and only became aware of it after government officials notified him.
"They told me a mzungu (white foreigner) had seen a picture of David and liked him very much," says Banda, a resident of a remote village in the poor country of Malawi. "They said she wanted to adopt and take him to America. They said that she would give him a better life."
Banda soon found himself in a courtroom with the Material Girl herself. "She was smiling a lot," said the confused villager. "She told me, 'Your son is very beautiful and he makes me very happy. I promise to take very good care of him.' ... I looked directly into her eyes and said, 'Although I am giving you my son I want you to look after him well as he is the only one I possess. I want you to keep this boy, raise him, educate him - but you have to know he is my son and he is a Malawian.' "
Banda, a Christian, has stated that he wishes his son to be brought up with Christian values. Madonna, of course, is a practitioner of Kabbalah, a fact Banda was apparently not aware of when he first learned the identity of his son's prospective new mother. In fact, Banda was originally told that the singer was, "a good Christian lady who does a lot of charity work," by the man who runs the orphanage where little David was living when Madonna first came to see him (the child was put in the orphanage after the death of his mother).
Now, according to the London Daily Mail, Banda, "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."
And Mr. Banda is not the only one expressing misgivings about Madonna's activities. A children's rights group called Eye of the Child has gone so far as to seek an injunction against the singer, preventing her from leaving the country with David. Said Eye of the Child in a statement: "It's not like selling property. It is about safeguarding the future of a human being who, because of age, cannot express an opinion."
Madonna, David and Yohane now find themselves in legal limbo.
