[Continued from HERE.]

Like in America, Malawians would do just about anything to find a way to give their children, the children in their care, a better chance at a good life, whatever that may be; even if it means sending their children away.

“Away” doesn’t necessarily require going across an ocean: many over-burdened parents will give one or more of their children to a relative that has the means to support the children. Others, like Mr. Banda, try to find an orphanage that has space (which is hard to do as there are very few orphanages compared to the number of children that need care) and will do what he can when he can, with the majority of the burden falling on the orphanage itself. I was often approached by well-intentioned mothers, fathers and grandparents asking, some begging, me to take their children and give them a “better life.”

When people would do that, ask me to take their children, they never said, “Please adopt my child.” Every single person that approached me said some variation of, “Please take care of my baby,” “Please give them a better life,” or simply, “Please take my baby to your country.” This is not just semantics. This is an indicator of something much bigger: Adoption in the sense with which we are familiar with it, is a concept that doesn’t exist in most African contexts including Malawi.

Adoption for most Malawians, for most Africans, is somehow akin to the idea of land ownership to pre-America Native Americans. I never had a sense of the extreme possessiveness we have in our parent/child relationships in Malawi: obligation, responsibility, connection, yes, but not necessarily ownership or possession. Every child is everyone’s child but every child knows from whom they come. For this reason, ‘adoption,’ in our conception of it, doesn’t necessarily apply, especially in its much fatigued, pre- “open” incarnation.

Mr. Banda often has stated that he thought Madonna would take David and raise him, but that then David would come back to him when he was older. He was told by the Malawian government official “reading” documents to him that the arrangement would mirror that of the agreement with the orphanage. David would have returned from the orphanage to his father at the age of 18. To Mr. Banda, of course Madonna would be a mother to David, just as every woman in the village would be a mother to every child in the village, but that shouldn’t mean that he would never see David again. I can only imagine how befuddling the whole concept was to Mr. Banda, going as it does against the grain of everything he holds to be true.

Imagine how terrifying it must have been for Mr. Banda when he realized the reality of the terms of adoption: that he would be giving David away forever and that David would no longer be his son. He wouldn’t have just been giving up his child and all that that means, but also his own security in his old age.

To Madonna’s credit, she responded well to this issue by agreeing to an open adoption, including bringing David back to Malawi minimally every two years. At least the M Fray is responsible for some positive change.

[Continued in the next M Fray blog: Human rights or wrongs?]