Latest from Malawi
Madonna continues keeping a low profile since arriving in Malawi, and yesterday she made a secretive visit to the Chezi Orphan Care Centre near the capital Lilongwe, Mines, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Henry Chimunthu Banda said. The Roman Catholic-run orphanage in a rural area has a nursery, a school and a clinic and is well known in the region.
Madonna had also been scheduled to meet Friday with Banda – the top government official in the absence of President Bingu wa Mutharika, who is out of the country. But Banda said Madonna had been “caught up” due to her visit to the orphanage and their meeting had been postponed.
On Thursday, Madonna visited another orphanage near Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre where she was greeted by a crowd of singing orphans. Orphanage officials said her husband, Guy Ritchie, accompanied her and filmed the children who received copies of her children’s book. The orphanage is home to 128 children, many of whom have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS in a pattern repeated throughout a country among the poorest in the world, trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of hunger and disease.
From the Associated Press.