Picking up the pieces, Madonna style

Until recently, the pop star's name meant little in a Malawi that had no TV a decade ago. Even now, all these boys know is that a rich white woman ensconced in a nearby luxury lodge is the cause of the hubbub near their village. "Madonna, Madonna," they yell.

On her third trip to Malawi since 2006, when she started a charity to help the country's poor and orphaned children - one of whom she later adopted - Madonna is expecting a judge to permit her to adopt a second Malawian child, Chifundo "Mercy" James, 4.

Critics have accused the singer of using her fame and fortune to speed up the adoption and say the little girl would be better off raised by her extended family. Madonna has maintained she is following standard procedure. This week she received the endorsement of a top Government minister.

Over the past week, Madonna and her entourage have travelled in three four-wheel-drives, drawing large crowds during visits to a day-care facility funded by her charity and to an orphanage where her adopted son, David, 3, once lived.

International photographers and television crews have set up daily stake-outs along the road to Kumbali Lodge, where Madonna has been staying in an oasis of charming chalets not far from the capital - and just a stone's throw from a scruffy village of the same name.

Sometimes the paparazzi wait under shady acacias near the presidential palace beforeguards move them on. Mostly, though, it is long hours spent on a dusty dirt road, watching village life go by. Then, at the first sign of the star's convoy, doors slam shut, engines rev and the chase begins.

The group of young boys, who scrounge empty plastic bottles from reporters, have little concept of Madonna's fame and wealth. But they can see the fuss she has created, and it is a source of great entertainment.

They break into belly laughs as photographers, long used to the indulgences of the celebrity circuit, use their teeth to strip bark off sticks of sugar cane and suck the sweet fibres inside.

The boys do not speak much English and the photographers - from France, Italy, Turkey and elsewhere - do not speak Chichewa, an official language in Malawi. But one language they all understand is soccer. Soon a rather deflated orange ball is produced and a game - with very flexible rules - is on.

This is a deeply Christian nation where a strict dress code banning trousers for women and long hair for men was enforced until the mid-1990s. Western pop music is seldom heard on radio stations, which play mostly African tunes and reggae.

The scene played out on the road to Kumbali Lodge illustrates this former British colony's battle to break the cycle of poverty and corruption that afflicts so much of Africa. To get there, one takes the Presidential Way that leads out of the capital, Lilongwe, toward the manicured lawns of the $US100 million ($140 million) presidential mansion built by Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who ruled Malawi for three decades after independence in 1964. He was ousted in the country's first multiparty election in 1994.

His successor, Bakili Muluzi, who faces corruption charges for allegedly siphoning $US10 million ($14 million) from donor countries into his personal bank account, refused while in office to live in the mansion while his people lived in poverty.

The incumbent President, Bingu wa Mutharika, whose face graces numerous billboards in his bid to be re-elected in next month's election, has no such objections.

The road to Madonna's lodge eventually disintegrates into a deeply rutted muddy track surrounded by corn fields, which cuts through the rundown village of Kumbali - a collection of crumbling mud huts, their roofs a patchwork of dried palm leaves. Here, men cycle past on old bicycles loaded with scraps of building material or passengers they are ferrying the five kilometres to Lilongwe.

One young girl of about 10 stood out during a visit there on Wednesday. Tall and scrawny, she was dressed in a dirty white T-shirt and a scrap of faded yellow-patterned cloth wrapped around her waist. She was struggling with an enormous bundle of wood she likely spent all morning gathering. Eventually, she managed to tie a rope made out of leaves around it. Then, with the help from another girl, she hoisted the load onto her head and walked off into the long grass.

She returned later with a bucket of water balanced on her head and swept the road clear of sugar cane debris with a broom of leafy branches. She was last seen strapping another woman's baby to her back and disappearing down the road.

In endorsing Madonna's adoption bid, Malawi's Child Welfare Minister, Anna Kachikho, noted that children like this one have benefited from the singer's charities, which have helped 25,000 youngsters in a country of more than a million orphans, half of whom lost their parents to AIDS.

If wealthy Westerners such as Madonna adopt even one, Kachikho says, "it's one mouth less" for Malawi to feed.

Associated Press