Madonna insisted yesterday she followed the law in taking custody of a Malawian baby, but the boy's father said "everything has happened so fast" that he didn't at first realize he was permanently giving up his only remaining child.


David Banda, 13 months old, arrived at Heathrow Airport yesterday, accompanied by a nanny, bodyguard and aides who whisked him to the London townhouse where the superstar lives with her husband, filmmaker Guy Ritchie, and children Lourdes, 10, and Rocco, 6. David's mother, Marita, died shortly after he was born. Two older sons died of malaria, and David himself was ailing, so his father said he decided to put him into an orphanage, where he could get better care.

"Deep in my heart I always imagined that when he was better . . . I would go and take him back,"

the father, Yohame Banda, told The Mail on Sunday newspaper.


He said he visited the baby as often as he could.

"I think of [David] as a gift from God. He is also the best memory I have left of my wife,"

Banda said, speaking through a translator.


Banda said he first heard of Madonna's interest in his son three weeks ago when Malawian child welfare officials told him "a mzungu [white foreigner] had seen a picture of David and liked him very much."


The impoverished father didn't know who Madonna was, but Chipeta told him "she was a good Christian lady." Although Madonna was raised Catholic, she is now a devotee of kabbalah, a Jewish mystical sect.


Banda met Madonna last Thursday at the High Court in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi

"She told me, 'Your son is very beautiful and he makes me very happy. I promise to take very good care of him.' "

So Madonna's a Good Christian Lady - does Kabalah know???