Madonna visits impoverished Malawi village
Madonna on Monday visited a Malawian village without running water nor electricity, hours after she landed for a three-day private visit with the baby boy that she plans to adopt.
Welcomed to Mtenje village, around 60 kilometres from the capital Lilongwe, by Jeffrey Sachs, head of the
United Nations Millenium Development Project, Madonna was shown a maize field and a fish pond project run by the villagers and funded by the UN to help pull themselves out of poverty.
After being greeted by traditional songs of welcome and praise, the singer, wearing camouflage long trousers and a hat, ventured deep into a maize field belonging to one villager.
“Madonna looked jovial and asked a lot of questions to Sachs about the project,” villager Mailosi Katundu, told AFP at the village.
She was also shown a fish pond, which is meant to enrich the protein intake of the villagers who eke out subsistence life and form part of the 60 percent of the 12 million citizens living below the poverty line in Malawi.
Spending about half an hour at the village, Madonna did not speak to reporters nor the villagers. She later sped off in a convoy of vehicles to her exclusive lodge on the outskirts of the capital.
While in the impoverished southern African nation, the “Material Girl” is expected to visit the Home of Hope, an orphanage in Mchinji, 110 kilometers from Lilongwe where she plucked little David Banda, then 13 months old, touching off a heated debate over the adoption.
David and his father Yohane Banda were also expected to re-unite at a secret venue during Madonna’s visit.
If they meet, it will be the second time that Yohane will be meeting Madonna after briefly meeting in court last during the processing of adoption documents. The adoption has still to be finalised but the London-based singer was awarded temporary custody in October.
Source: AFP via Yahoo! News.