It’s a horrifically crass thing to joke about, but here at Jackfruity we’re all about crassness (not to mention ending clauses with dangling prepositions), so I’ll go ahead and say it: if I had 100 shillings for every time I’ve been asked to take a Ugandan child back to the States with me, I’d be able to…well, I’d be able to take a Ugandan child back to the States with me.
It’s a request that makes me even more squirmy and uncomfortable than Jay-Z dressed up as a Maasai warrior, and each time I hear it I retreat a little further into my shell of paranoid mzungu-ness, wanting desperately for my skin color not to scream look at me, I’m a FOREIGNER!
Madonna, as you already know if you’ve peeked out from your hermit cave once in the last month, seems to have no qualms about it. Her adoption of a Malawi “orphan” is one of the most-discussed celebrity events of October. Of all the comments I’ve read about this much-debated attempt at charity, Mad Kenyan Woman’s is by far the funniest:
While I don’t come down as harshly on Madonna as she does (the pop star’s also contributing $4 million to a Child Center and other development projects in the country), I do think her criticism of the adoption is worth a read just for the writing. Another good piece on the same topic, written from the point of view of a Malawian, is at Afrika-Aphurika (via Global Voices).