The best thing about Madonna going to Malawi this week is Malwai getting to see what a leotarded vagina looks like.
No, wait, that’s disgusting. What we meant to say was that the best thing about Madonna going to Malawi this week is that her adopted son David Banda can meet his biological father Yohane for the first time since Madonna took him out of the country. Because, really, what’s the worst thing that can happen? David Banda not recognising Yohane and asking him who he is and why he’s so poor through an interpreter?
Oh, that actually happened? Awkward.
Adopting a child from another country can be an incredibly bittersweet affair. Although on one hand, you’re taking the child out away from a life of poverty, misery and a criminally low life expectancy, you’re also destroying part of their cultural heritage.
What’s more, for every moment of joy you derive from giving your new child a silly, made-up name, you’ve also got to cope with the moment of agony that comes when you realise that People paid more for Christina Aguilera‘s stupid baby photos than your own. It’s a ruddy minefield.
And that’s why you need to be delicate about it. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, for instance, famously observe each of their children’s geographically-specific indigenous Christmas traditions. And Madonna, um, gives her children funny haircuts and then ignores their biological parents for so long that they completely fail to recognise each other on the rare occasion that they do meet. Which is sort of the same thing, really.
Madonna is currently in Malawi trying to adopt a girl called Mercy James – who is either a poverty-stricken orphan or, judging by her name, a feisty wild west prostitute – and she used this visit to briefly reunite David Banda with his father Yohane. It was a touching gesture, or at least it would have been a touching gesture if a) David Banda knew who his father was, b) spoke the same language as his father or c) managed to show even the slightest flicker of empathy for his father. Now quotes:
?He asked me in English who I was and what I do. When I told him, ?I am your daddy? he looked surprised. We spent three hours together… he played with my nose and although he did not know who I was he asked me lots of questions. He asked me why I am poor.?
Sadly the visit was cut short when David Banda mistook one of his biological uncles for a cocktail waiter, ordered him to scare up a Mai Tai while clicking his fingers, then went after him with a horsewhip when he didn’t instantly comply. This didn’t happen.
However, despite all the obvious awkwardness in the encounter – and the larger illustration of the heartbreak that foreign adoption can cause – Yohane Banda also said that he’s grateful that Madonna adopted David and saved him from ‘possible early death.’ He then hopped onto his gleaming new motorcycle and zoomed off to the jetski marina leaving a cloud of money in his wake.
This didn’t happen either. Probably.
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Shooty* says
It’s wrong to laugh, but I did anyway. Paragraph 3 was my favourite.