Madonna and Child . . .

A little boy was flown into Heathrow from Malawi. His - for the time temporary - adoptive mother is a famous singing star. Over the last few years this purveyor of "music" has developed a conscience. So - she goes to Malawi and sees the starvation, poverty and degradation of the orphans there. She donates loadsamunny to an orphanage for children of AIDS victims and tries to adopt one of the children. Malawi law says that children may not be adopted by foreign carers. But several millions of dollars in charity donations speaks very loud. So the rules get "bent" so that she can have temporary custody of the child for 18 months while the application for adoption goes through. This could be long enough, if the government is corrupt enough, to change the law so that she can legally adopt the child.
If the child is adopted there is no doubt that he will live a completely different life to that which he would have had in Malawi. A large mansion to live in. Toys to play with. The best education money can buy. No worries for the future about finance. Everything we all dream of.
When the lad arrived in this country he was carried lovingly off the plane by - a nanny. Not the doting prospective mum - doubtless she was too busy making her next million.
This poses the question: will Madonna give the boy the most important thing a mother can give? Will he really feel loved and wanted? Or is he just to be another publicity stunt who, in time, will drift into obscurity?
Money doesn't necessarily buy happiness. Would it have been better if Madonna had given her money - and her time and energy - towards helping the Malawi people look after their own? Giving a better standard of living so that the locals felt more able to look after their own children and bring them up in the local culture and environment? Instead of singling out one child the efforts she has made could help hundreds, maybe thousands, of children to become more able to help themselves and thus - in the long run - help Malawi extract itself from the third-world poverty to which the Western powers have condemned it.
Madonna has done one good thing. She has highlighted the problems of the African nations in dealing with poverty. But has she gone about her help in a selfish way? Did she really want to help Africa or did she want to have praise for helping one child - a child who will more than likely be brought up by a nanny rather than the woman who wants to be his adoptive "mum".
Her money, I feel, could have been more productively spent in helping the Malawi people to help themselves.
Someone once said words to the effect that if you give someone food they eat for the day but if you give them seed and a plough they, and the generations after them, eat for ever.