Madonna spends £15,000 on new nursery...while baby's father returns to the fields

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Toys like this BMW are ready for baby David below. Meanwhile his father Yohane Banda tends to crops

As Madonna's adopted baby David Banda adjusted to his new life of bewildering wealth, his father has got back to the business of growing enough food to stay alive.

Subsistence farmer Yohane Banda spent the day tending to his potato and onion crops in the remote village of Lipunga, Malawi, watering them from a rusty old can and spraying them with pesticide in blistering heat.

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Mr Banda, 32, insisted he had no regrets about his 13-month-old son's adoption and was happy that his only child had a new family to look after him.

Until he was whisked 5,000 miles away to London this week, David, whose mother died shortly after he was born, lived in an orphanage where his father had taken him because he was too poor to buy him milk.

But yesterday David was surrounded by £15,000 worth of toys in his new nursery, which Madonna has had painted with jungle scenes.

They include a child-sized electric BMW, a £5,000 wooden rocking horse, several giant cuddly toys and a surround-sound music system.

Although David may still be too little to make use of many of his gifts, and may not yet fit his wardrobe-full of designer clothes at his new £6million London home, the presents are intended to lessen his homesickness.

A source close to the couple said the gifts had been bought over the past six months, rather than in one giant shopping spree.

"Contrary to reports that Madonna and Guy have steamrollered their way through the adoption process, they have been planning this move for months and months," said the source.

"Madonna has had great fun choosing baby David's toys and accessories, getting him all the latest, coolest gear and both she and Guy have had a ball sorting out his bedroom.

"At the moment, they plan to have David sleep in a cot in their bedroom. But when he's ready and old enough, he'll be moved into his own huge bedroom which has been incredibly thoughtfully decked out.

"As well as a designer wardrobe, Madonna and Guy have laid his bed with cotton and cashmere sheets and blankets, and a surround sound music system which will pipe out classical music.

"The room's got a jungle mural on one side - lions, tigers, those kind of animals - and white painted walls elsewhere, but its piece de resistance is undoubtedly a small scale electric BMW car.

"I think Guy is particularly excited about this one and trying it out with David the minute he's old enough!

"Madonna's only stipulation was that there was to be no television in the room. As with her other two children, she doesn't want David growing up watching mundane rubbish.

"One thing is for sure though, David will not want for anything in the Ritchie household, either materially or emotionally. The family are already besotted with him."

Human rights groups in Malawi said yesterday they were still hoping to lodge an appeal against a judge's decision to allow David to leave the country, which they claim broke strict Malawian rules requiring parents to remain in the country for 18 months before they can adopt.

But Yohane Banda said he did not support the legal challenge, adding: "David is my son. I agreed that he be taken away and the whole village agreed with me. I am happy for my son because he will become a man of understanding."

Asked if he was missing David, Mr Banda, who lives in a thatched hut made from mud bricks, said: "No, not really, because we have agreed with Madonna that he will visit us here in three to four years time."

Madonna, 48, and her 38-year-old husband, British film director Guy Ritchie, bypassed lengthy vetting procedures for adoptive parents in the UK, which can take up to a year, by using a California-based adoption agency to help them find David.

It also enabled them to get round strict guidelines on inter-racial adoption, which are strongly discouraged in the UK.

A fast-track system for international adoptions which operates in the US cuts the process down to two to four months, including home visits, fingerprinting and FBI clearance.

Malawi and America are both on the UK's 'designated list' of foreign countries in which adoptions are automatically recognised by British courts, meaning Madonna, a US citizen, was under no obligation to inform the authorities here that she had been granted an interim order to be David's guardian.

Carolyn Usher, an international family law specialist from Reynolds Porter Chamberlain solicitors, said: "Madonna does not appear to have done anything wrong, though it is a somewhat unusual way to behave."

Madonna and Guy Ritchie are understood to have used the Vista Del Mar adoption agency in Los Angeles, which was recommended to them by their friends Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt after they had adopted a daughter from Ethiopia.

During an 18-month evaluation period officials from Malawi will make visits to the UK to assess whether Madonna and Mr Ritchie are suitable parents.

They may also visit the star at her 1,200-acre estate in Wiltshire or at her homes in New York and Los Angeles. Only after the 18 months is up will she be allowed to finalise the adoption.

 

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