southern African country.
government officials that she planned to adopt a child.
the boy, David Banda, was with Madonna as her white a waiting private jet.
distended bellies subsist on scant rations and battle malaria, was the last home for the boy.
Centre in Mchinji, near the Zambian border, David faced a bleak future when he was sent here after his mother died.
The news that Davie, as he is known to carers, would be heading the orphanage and surrounding villages, prompting some envy among the children who were not chosen.
"I didn't know Madonna before she came to the orphanage, but I wish I had been the one she adopted. Life is hard here," Anders Malikita, 14, said.
charities.
Eye of the Child, a private Malawian child advocacy group, issued an open letter to Madonna this week, questioning whether foreign adoptions were in the best interests of children.
But Thomson Ligowe, deputy registrar for Malawi's High Court, David.
the same court to either allow her to adopt the child or not," he said.
Under Malawian law the hearing must take place within two years.
how she will relate to the child, and people from social welfare will have to observe that," Mr Ligowe said. "The court will depend upon their observations to make a final decision.
"
court's next decision.
arriving in Malawi on October 4, although she was seen wearing a safari hat and in a jovial mood on a visit to one orphanage.
Madonna and husband, Guy Ritchie, have houses in the US and Britain, most unlikely settings for the young David, who has lived almost all his brief life in a dilapidated orphanage.
Madonna has a son and a daughter. She has spent most of the past campaign to publicise the plight of about 900,000 orphans in the country of 13 million people, where AIDS has destroyed many families.
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