Madonna was welcomed in Malawi on Tuesday for the official opening of a hospital children’s wing funded by her charity and named after one of the four children the pop star has adopted from the impoverished southern African nation.
“You started by adopting four Malawian children, now we are adopting you as the daughter of this nation,” President Peter Mutharika declared at the ceremony.
“There are so many things I never imagined I will do. I never imagined one day I will build this kind of a hospital,” said Madonna, who explained that she grew up without a mother and wanted to give the best to Malawian children.
“Never give up on your dreams,” she added.
The Mercy James Institute for Pediatric Surgery and Intensive Care, located at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in the city of Blantyre, was built in collaboration with Malawi’s health ministry. It has already started some activities, and Madonna said last week that the institute had completed its first surgery.
The four children she adopted from Malawi are David Banda, Mercy James, Stelle and Estere. The children’s wing was named after 11-year-old Mercy.
Madonna’s charity, Raising Malawi, was founded in 2006 to address the poverty and hardship endured by the country’s orphans and other vulnerable children. It has built schools and funded the new paediatric unit, which began construction in 2015 and includes three operating rooms dedicated to children’s surgery, a day clinic and a 45-bed ward.
The wards have been designed with murals including images of Nelson Mandela and archbishop Desmond Tutu, while US actor Leonardo DiCaprio was listed on a wall as a major benefactor.
Mutharika cut a blue ceremonial ribbon, and held it up to the cheering crowd
Madonna, 58, visited the site last year.
“When you look into the eyes of children in need, wherever they may be, a human being wants to do anything and everything they can to help, and on my first visit to Malawi, I made a commitment that I would do just that,” Madonna said last week.
Madonna has not always been welcomed with open arms in one of the world’s poorest countries, where some activists accuse her of using her wealth to shortcut the adoption process.
In 2013, she was stripped of her official VIP status in Malawi by then president Joyce Banda’s government, which accused her of being “uncouth” and expecting gratitude for her adoptions.
President Mutharika has since moved to repair the relationship, previously saying his government had “always been grateful for the passion Madonna has for this country”.
The singer, who divorced film director Guy Ritchie in 2008, now has six children after adopting her twins.
Court documents detailed how the twins were taken in by an orphanage supported by Madonna’s charity.
Their mother died soon after childbirth, their father left to marry another woman, and their grandmother struggled to look after several children.
“Malawi needs such kind-hearted people to prosper,” Malita Ndau, a 20-year-old woman selling doughnuts in Blantyre, told AFP.
“Malawian children will now have a chance of survival because of this hospital.”
But some Malawians said the hospital highlighted the country’s failures.
Malawi should “be ashamed for begging from her to build this facility because we have failed to tame corruption,” said Mumbo Phiri, who sells second-hand clothes.
