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Anorak News | Madonna’ Baby David

Madonna’ Baby David

by | 11th, October 2006

IT was a long search but after a gruelling selection process Madonna has adopted a year-old child.

He is, as the Sun’s front page announces, “MADONNA’S RAY OF LIGHT.”

Ever since America became fresh out of orphans, would-be parents have been forced to look further a field for new family members.

It had been hoped that Madonna would take on a British child. For some weeks now, girls and boys with chimney soot on their faces have been hooking their fingers into their homemade belts and braces and striding to and fro past Madonna’s London townhouse hoping to be spotted and chosen.

But it was not to be. And the Sun reports that Madonna has selected an African child. Her face “beams with joy” as she carries the tot in a papoose on her back.

Dressed from head to toe in colonial white, Madonna has gone native. No buggies for her lad. “The babies move to the sway of their mothers’ hips, synchronized throughout the day, bending with them as they collect water or sweep the floor and rising again when the women stop to rest,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle of African mothers, like Madonna.

As Madonna dips to collect water in the local supermarket or river, her new child dips. As she twists to look coquettishly over her shoulder, her son twists. The boy rises and falls as Madonna does the splits and performs a downward dog.

With Madonna and child at the authentically African Kumbali country lodge, Malawi (the venue’s website promises: “9 executive rooms, which are enclosed under ethnic thatch, have en-suite bathrooms with both shower and bath. Tea and coffee facilities, TV, Internet”), the Mail also spots David.

Yes, David. It was all looking so promising. After Angelina Jolie’s Maddox and Zahara, we were expecting a more location-themed, Kabbalah-based name, something to make the child stand out, raised up above the ordinary. But instead of Chai, Zohar or Michigan, we get David. It’s baby David.

And he’s not an orphan. Though David’s mother Marita died shortly after childbirth, the boy’s father is alive. And the Sun catches up with David’s father Yohane Banda, who ekes out a living as a potato farmer.

“I’m very happy,” says Yohane, “as you can see there is poverty in my village.” He adds: “I know he will be very happy in America.”

We share Yohane’s hopes. It must be a wrench saying goodbye to first wife and then a son. But we are unsure if David qualifies as an orphan, as the Sun labels him?

Perhaps, like America, there are no orphans left in Africa? And perhaps Madonna, worth £248m, feels that giving Yohane money to raise his boy will break with tradition…



Posted: 11th, October 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink