Madonna's Brief Malawi Visit Didn't Allow For Some Kidnapped Baby/Biological Father Face Time
Babysnatching do-gooder Madonna's recently returned to Malawi to tour the sites of her various philanthropic projects there, but also on the itinerary was a scheduled reunion between absconded toddler David Banda and his biological father, Yohane—a meeting, Yohane told a reporter from Us Magazine recently, that would never come to pass:
"I never met him," said the soft-spoken farmer in a telephone interview from his Lipunga Village in the border district of Mchinji. "Plans were there for me to meet David but it never happened."
Banda was in another town visiting his ailing former brother-in-law when the 48-year-old singer stopped by the orphanage, so Banda's brother Pofera (a secondary school student at a school run by the orphanage) stopped in on his behalf. [...]
"They have to know David's roots. But I know it will happen one day, some day, hopefully before my mother (58-year-old Asineti Mwale) dies. I must say my mother was looking forward to meet David and she was a little sad it was never to happen. But I assured her it will happen one day."
If there was no tearful father-son reunion unfolding inside the walls of the orphanage on the designated day, we're suddenly left curious as to just what the small army of teen orphans throwing rocks at the gathered media were protecting the "Hung Up" singer from, as a routine celebrity photo-op tour of a Third World orphanage is rendered useless when robbed of the cameras to capture it. Still, we wouldn't hasten to label Madonna—who has pledged in the past to keep David in contact with his father—selfish or unfeeling in canceling the reunion, as the focus of the trip was squarely on the far more pressing task of overseeing the construction of her charitable endeavors: Give an orphan a red-string bracelet, the old proverb goes, they'll ward off evil eye for a few days, but help them start up their own red-string-bracelet and God-scented-candle mail order company, you've guaranteed nothing bad will ever happen to them again.
