Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Madonna · S9 E1
Raising Malawi
The adoption of David Banda, the press storm that followed, and what the charity work actually looked like on the ground
Home of Hope orphanage, Mchinji, Malawi, October 2006. Madonna kneels on the floor next to a thirteen-month-old boy named David Banda who has malaria, pneumonia, and no surviving parent, and she decides in that moment that he is her son.
"Dear Jessie" (1989). The most tender, child-focused song in Madonna's catalog, accompanied by an animated video full of fairies, elephants, and a child's boundless imagination. For an episode about a woman who flies to an orphanage in central Africa and brings a baby home, this is the sound of the world Madonna wants to build for her children: safe, magical, and full of wonder.
The Adoption
Madonna visits the Home of Hope orphanage in Mchinji during a humanitarian trip to Malawi and meets David Banda, whose mother died shortly after his birth. She begins the adoption process immediately, but Malawi's laws require an eighteen-month residency period for foreign adoptions. Madonna's legal team applies for an exception, and the global press erupts.
“I didn't go to Malawi looking to adopt. But when I met David, there was no other option. He was my child.”
— Madonna, on the decision to adopt David Banda
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Madonna's Malawi charity work actually begin?
Dear Jessie, Madonna (1989)
"Dear Jessie" was written by Madonna and Patrick Leonard for the Like a Prayer album, and the animated music video was directed by the team at Animation City. The production is built on a lullaby-like melody with layered harmonics and a vocal that sounds like a bedtime story being sung aloud. Listen for the way the arrangement gets more fantastical as the song progresses, adding strings, horns, and choir voices until the whole thing sounds like a children's book come to life. It is the gentlest recording Madonna has ever made.
Home of Hope Orphanage, Mchinji, Malawi
The orphanage in central Malawi where Madonna meets David Banda in October 2006. Mchinji sits near the Zambian border, far from any city that makes international news. Before Madonna's visit, almost nobody outside Malawi had heard of it.
Madonna and Malawi
Sanctuary
From Bedtime Stories (1994). The title is the single word that explains why Madonna adopts four children from Malawi: she wants to give them sanctuary. The song is a warm, mid-tempo meditation on finding a place where you are safe, written twelve years before she walks into the Home of Hope orphanage. The lyric asks for nothing except peace, which is exactly what a child in an orphanage in Mchinji needs more than anything else in the world.
Sanctuary, Madonna (1994)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Madonna wrote this about finding emotional safety in the mid-1990s. A decade later, the word "sanctuary" takes on a different meaning entirely: a physical place where a child can survive.
How many children has Madonna adopted from Malawi in total?
The adoption battle is still playing out in the courts when Madonna walks into a studio with Timbaland, Pharrell, and Justin Timberlake. The album they make together will be called Hard Candy, and for the first time in her career, critics will say she is following trends instead of setting them.
0 XP earned this session