The abandoned site looks more like a quarried mine than a pop superstar’s multi-million-dollar dream to groom girls into Malawi’s next leaders and doctors.
But the bleak, leveled terraces of gravelly sand near Malawi’s capital are the only evidence of Madonna’s US$15 million academy that was ditched in a cloud over misused funds and disgruntled locals.
“This has just become a football ground now,” said local chief Binson Kalenga.
Photo: AFP
The bulldozers are long silent where Madonna — who adopted two children from Malawi — laid a foundation stone engraved “dare to dream” in April last year, in a simple village in a desperately poor African country that many Americans could not find on a map.
A year later the school had been called off. The star is being sued by employees who were fired, her charity is tied up in a US tax investigation, and Malawi is investigating how the land was paid for.
“Initially although I welcomed [it], personally I was very skeptical about the whole thing,” said Lilongwe District Commissioner Paul Kalilombe. “There was just too much publicity before there was any work on the ground.”
Madonna’s charities did not reply to queries. In January, she said the academy project was off in favor of helping existing schools across the country.
But the New York Times then reported on an audit, ordered by Madonna, that found US$3.8 million squandered on the discarded academy.
The audit reportedly found a “startling lack of accountability” on the management team in Malawi and the US.
The star’s last word was in April when she said a new strategy would be announced in coming weeks.
Unhappiness here began with payments to villagers for the land, which Madonna’s charity Raising Malawi paid through the government.
“It would appear that maybe there were some ghost villagers. Within the list of recipients there are some people who were inserted maybe by some officers who are involved in the practice,” Kalilombe said. “But it is a matter that is being investigated by the fiscal police in Malawi.”
But in Chinkhota, an explanation had yet to reach villagers, who have to swallow a doubly bitter pill with their former fields ruined and not a classroom in sight.
“People were just surprised that there is no activity and wondering what is happening,” said Tsiyent Foroyati, 52, sitting in the dirt-yard of her homestead.
Foroyati had never heard of Madonna until she adopted two Malawian children. As the biggest landowner around the school’s site, she was paid US$258 in compensation but had wanted US$19,700.
The family now pays US$33 to rent 0.4 hectares for farming.
“Even if the project continued, we would still be angry because where are we going to garden?” Foroyati said. “And the biggest problem is that even if we were given back the land, it’s very difficult to cultivate it.”
The singer has poured millions into helping children in Malawi, where 39 percent of the population lives on less than US$1 a day.
In Namitete, west of Lilongwe, a dated picture of her with ex-husband Guy Ritchie in the background is on one of the noticeboards at the Mphandula Child Care Centre, which the singer bankrolled.
The community center feeds more than 200 children a day, with a class of grandmothers sitting in the shade and bouncing children who are learning how to perform a dance from a Japanese volunteer.
“I really appreciate that she came,” said the center’s program manager Jacinta Champomba, who has never heard Madonna’s music but said she shared the idea of caring for orphans.
For the school, Madonna should have worked with an existing organization that knows “what is actually happening on the ground”, said Kalilombe, who believes an orphanage is planned for the academy site.
“When a person of such stature comes in, people most only think of the money,” he said. “The idea was good. She had good intentions, but now to implement it on the ground, that brought a lot of complications.”
Chief Kalenga said he wants to ask Madonna why the project failed.
“We felt happy that this is a person who was going to help us. We welcomed her as a fellow Malawian,” he said.
“We are heartbroken because of the rumors we still hear about this project being stopped,” he added. “We are demanding that Madonna should come and tell us what has happened. We don’t want to hear it from rumors but we want her to come and explain to us.”
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50