Madonna visits Kondanani orphanage, on the outskirts of Malawi's commercial capital Blantyre. Photograph: AP. The pop star told the talk show host Oprah Winfrey she was concerned the media portrayal of the adoption could discourage others from adopting African children, saying it was "doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa, not just Malawi, by turning it into such a negative thing". Madonna and her film director husband, Guy Ritchie, have faced intense scrutiny after taking temporary custody of the child, called David, who left his orphanage in Malawi to come to London last week. The couple have been granted an interim adoption order by the Malawian government, and final approval is expected in 18 months. Madonna told the programme that adoption laws in Malawi were non-existent, and the situation needed to be changed in response to the "state of emergency" in the country. "There are no adoption laws in Malawi," she said. "I was warned by my social worker that, because there were no known laws in Malawi, they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along . .. she did say to me, 'don't go to Malawi because you're just going to get a hard time'. " The singer urged her critics to travel to Africa to see what she had seen. "To see eight-year-olds in charge of households, to see mothers dying, to see open sewages everywhere, to see what I saw - it is a state of emergency," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, the adoption laws have to be changed to suit that state of emergency. I think if everybody went there, they'd want to bring one of those children home with them and give them a better life." She said her status had not speeded up the process of adopting the child. "I assure you it doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa," she said. The interview, recorded via satellite from Madonna's home in London, was aired on US television. The Human Rights Consultative Committee, a human rights group in Malawi, has asked the high court to review the case on the grounds that law forbids international adoption. There have also been conflicting interviews with Yohane Banda, the poor farm worker who was forced to place his son in the Home for Hope orphanage after the boy's mother died and he was unable to support him. In an interview with Time, he said he did not know that Madonna would be taking his son "for good", and thought he would come back once he had finished school. However, the singer accused the media of putting "words into the mouth" of Mr Banda. "I sat in that room, I looked into that man's eyes," she told Ms Winfrey. "I believe that the press is manipulating this information out of him. "I believe .. . he's been terrorised by the media. They have asked him things, repeatedly, and they have put words in his mouth. They have spun a story that is completely false." "I was allowed to view footage and photographs of a lot of the children. An eight-year-old girl who is living with HIV was holding this child," she said. "I became transfixed by him ... but I didn't yet know I was going to adopt him. I was just drawn to him." She also showed photographs of herself with David and her children Lourdes, nine, and six-year-old Rocco. The 48-year-old singer said her children had "embraced" David. "They don't ask questions. They've never once . .. questioned his presence in our life. That is an amazing lesson that children do teach us." Madonna, listed as the highest earning female singer of all time in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records, travelled to Malawi in early October to visit several orphanages and raise awareness about AIDS orphans, for whom she is building an orphanage and child care centre.
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