(Ali Hewson talks to The Big Issues’ Rosemarie Meleady about her work, fears and the possibility of adopting children in the future)

Paul Hewson, now known worldwide as `Bono,’ the lead singer with mega-big rock band U2, fell head over heels in love with the attractive brown-eyed girl the first day she arrived at Mount Temple Secondary School, Dublin.

At first, Ali played hard to get as she was not going to be “just one of Paul’s girls,” but by his 17th birthday they were going out together. Now married for 16 years, Ali and Bono have two children, Jordan and Eve.

Ali Hewson is not the typical superstar’s wife who lends her name to any charity that asks. Bono’s childhood sweetheart has successfully kept her world private amidst the status which world fame brings. 38-year-old Ali, who exudes natural beauty, intelligence and warm friendliness, is the active working patron of the Chernobyl Children’s Project (CCP). Alongisde CCP founder and presidential candidate, Adi Roche, Ali has driven the gruelling 2,500-mile journey from Ireland to Belarus in desperate missions to bring aid to some of the four million chidren who are chronically ill as a result of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster in 1986.

“I’ve been out there seven or eight times. The first time I went (in 1993) I didn’t realise what i was going to be faced with. I don’t think anybody did. Seven years on, poeple thought Chernobyl had gone away and the problem was over.”

The eleventh aid convoy to Western Russia will be leaving Ireland in April, delivering everything from life-saving machines and ambulances to shoes and toys. Ali will not be accompanying this convoy.

“I’ve got two kids and their daddy has been away, so one of us has to be here.”

Ali plans that when husband, Bono returns from his PopMart world tour she can head out to Belarus in Ocotber to do some hands-on work.

For the first time the convoy is linking with two other foreign charities, one of them being the Scottish charity Mission East, Ali explains: “They are going to the Ukraine and we’re providing a truck for them. They were on the (RTE television chat show) The Pat Kenny Show and they showed some horrific footage of children being led in for operations without anaesthetics and being tied down to chairs. It was horrific. I couldn’t watch it. Adi is going with that truck though. to find the place.”

Although Ali plays a very active part in CCP, she would love to be able to do more.

“I don’t have a skill. My biggest regret in life is that I never became a nurse because I’d be able togo out to all these countries and really help hands-on and really get stuck in.”

Although Ali lives in Killiney, Co Dublin and the CCP office is in Cork, she has figured out a way of still doing continuous hands-on work.

“I sort of take on unusual cases, like little Yulya who has a very rare disease called PKU. She’s not able to absorb protein into her body, so she has to have food that has absolutely no protein in it. If she takes in any protein she could go into a coma.”

Ali sourced two companies – one in Spain and the other in Ireland – who now send a continuous supply of the specially manufactured food which Yulya needs to survive.

“I also just link inot hospitals and doctors who can help with different children like for little Alexei, we found Michael Hurley at Temple Street Hospital (in Dublin).”

Alexei had an operation to remove a tumour from his eye socket the size of a baseball. It was a really complicated operation which actually involved completely taking his skull apart and putting it back together again. He will need further treatment.

“He’s a great little fella and really smart,” says Ali proudly

CCP is on the brink of an international adoption agreement between Belarus and Ireland which they have been negotiating for the past two years. This would enable the five children being fostered in Ireland from Belarus to be adopted by their Irish families.

“I’ve had little to do with the adoption agreement really but all the children we have brought in have severe physical disabilities but are very mentally capable.”

CCP wouldn’t be encouraging people to contact them in relation to adoption as they are dealing with children who have very special needs.

“There are many families who would love to take a child but there are only certain families who could take the children with such intense physical disabilities.”

Ali continues: “In Belarus, these children, if they had survived there, would have gone to institution after institution and would have been totally institutionalised as mentally capable children just lumped in with children who are mentally incapable of doing anything. All the children need help but these ones were in immediate need”.

“If we can, we do intend to bring over more severe cases. Hopefully, the agreement we have been working on for two and a half years will come through. We will be the first country to have an adoption agreement with Belarus and then we will be able to take more children over.”

When asked what will the five children’s fate be if the agreement does not come through, she answers definitely: “That’s not going to happen.”

I feel that if blood had to be spilt over this, Ali would be the first in the firing line.

“We won’t let that happen. No. We just won’t let that happen. Alexei would have died if he had stayed where he was. And little Alanna, who is now down in Cork, was in very serious danger. She had to get iron rods put into her body because she has a degenerative bone problem and even handling her could break her bones. She’s a very smart and well adjusted kid now.”

When Ali was working on the award-winning documentary `Black Wind, White Land – Living With Chernobyl,’ she struck up a particularly strong bond with Anna, one of the Belarusian children. She’s now her godmother.

“I met Anna during the documentary. She wasjust nine months old and my own little girl was about 18 months old at the time. We met her in the children’s Number One House, which is where children who are abandoned because of their disabilities are kept if they don’t have to be in hospital.

“Anna is in the documentary. Both her legs are short. Both her ears are closed. But she is very alert and she’s a lovely kid and I don’t know, I just picked her up and it’s just one of those things where we bonded…And it’s incredible now to see her living down in Bandon with her new family…She’s an amazing character and she’s taken over Bandon, I think!”

Being the caring person she is, Ali does find it difficult to leave the children behind when leaving the orphanages. So did Ali and Bono ever consider adopting a child?

“We have thought about it. Yes. We have thought about it strongly with some children from Belarus. It’s very hard going over there and you’ll not be able to bring them all home but you have to be as objective as you can about it. In the end, I decided that…well, we decided that to take a child with disabilities would mean constant attention to that one child and it would mean not being able to work for the project and for all the children.

“And there are so many families who are prepared to take the children, who can support them and give them the one-to-one attention. Plus it’s difficult for any child to come into our family because of who their daddy would then be,” Ali says with a grin.

“That would be an extra spotlight on them and it’s going to be hard enough on them to adjust and to deal with what they have to deal wihtout that end of it.”

Ali continues: “So for those two reasons, at this stage, I’ve decided to keep working with the project in the hope of helping more children in general.”

by Michael Dwyer and Tom Wilkinson for Melody Maker

From Zoo TV to PopMart, U2 think…big! As their tour hits Australia, we find Bono fantasising (sic) about being a singer/songwriter and erm, killing people…

The end appears shockingly nigh. The door to the outside world slams shut with a resounding boom, leaving a dozen Australian media folk trapped in a tiny, white room. We eye each other nervously as a soft hissing sound pierces the silence. Nothing in here but…gas pipes! Of course! The press junket of a lifetime ingeniously twisted into the ultimate act of media manipulation! “Damn you to hell, MacPhisto!” I scream with my last poisonous breath. “You and your Satanic Pop irony!”

Except I don’t really. After 30 seconds, another door sucks open with that ear-popping sensation one normally associates with descending aircraft. A pleasant lady on the other side of the airlock smiles and says “Welcome to PopMart.”

It’s a very, very weird place. After the endless rows of empty seats, the TV is the first thing you notice. It’s f***ing huge. Millions of multi-coloured computer graphics race across it while below some workmen wrap a 35-foot mirrored football in lemon clothing and a team of roadies mill about soundchecking under a giant 115-foot golden arch.

Up close, the world’s biggest TV looks and feels like a cheap radiator. Kind of. Bars of metal tubing are studded every six inches or so with a cluster of red, green, and blue diodes. We’re encouraged to look closely and marvel as the guided tour files onto the PopMart stage.

A nice American man named Rocky (or Rusty or Randy) talks in mind-buggering statistics, as he points out various features of the beast being fine-tuned all around us. It takes two 747s to leap-frog the two stages from city to city, he says. There’s 28 semi-trailers involved, a travelling crew of 100, plus 250 local bods, including 52 truck drivers… enormous video FX…hydraulic stairs on lemon…scenic beds…arch… nothing-to-do-with-McDonald’s…wow, um…zzzzzzzz.

The final leg of the grand tour goes subterranean. Beneath the stage is a labyrinth studded with black-and-white TVs ready to monitor every sign made by the band. But as our King Roadie guide begins reeling out lines like “without the audience, there’s no show,” I suddenly remember it’s time to go and eat.

The pressure chamber is vibrating with a whole different energy when I return. The band enters Perth’s 20,000-seat Burswood Casino Dome from the rear, Bono following the others in his blue silk boxer’s robe, arms aloft and a spring in his step. The screen ignites with PopMart graphics and the crowd goes mental.

What follows is a total headf***. This telly – 150 by 50 feet, if it’s an inch – just looks amazing. So does the flashing arch centrepiece. And the band come back for the encore in a giant spinning lemon which glides halfway down the arena before splitting open and spitting out The World’s Biggest Rock Band. Phwooaaaaarr!

But this stuff, you’ve probably read about. In terms of surprises, therefore, there’s just one set-piece that resonates more grandly in this particular country than it could have anywhere else in the world.

“This is for Michael Hutchence,” Bono says as The Edge fingers the exquisite intro to “One”. The gesture is loudly appreciated. Warholesque images of various deceased icons flash on the screen, giving way to a giant red heart beating beneath the arch.

A multiple-image of Hutchence takes shape as the band segues into the slow, brooding “Wake Up Dead Man.” Five minutes later, the house lights go up and the crowd mills out, quietly stunned. The tribute is not remarkable for its existence, but for its placing in the whole pixel-happy spectacle. If we were allowed to display our collective thoughts in 50-foot high letters, they might say something like this: “BUMMER.”

“Sorry for keepin’ ya,” Larry Mullen announces. “It was Bono’s fault.” It’s almost an hour after the main event when Mullen, The Edge and Adam Clayton file into a large office within the Dome complex to scattered applause from the media. Bono comes last, hood over his head, and a CD boom box perched on his shoulder.

“What track on the Propellerheads album is Shirley Bassey on?” he demands. He finds the appropriate spot and nearly falls over in ecstasy as “History Repeating” grinds in with maximum sex appeal. “Aaaaaaaaw, check it out! There she goes! Shirley! I’m in the mood,
now…”

Not for long, he isn’t. Naturally enough, he’s asked about the decidedly downbeat conclusion to an otherwise upbeat affair.

“We had a picture of Michael and we put it through the Pop processing and Warholed it” he sighs. “This is his country. This is his house and we can’t help thinking about him when we’re here.”

Everyone relaxes as the inevitable rigours-of-the-road question rears its head. “The food is fine in this prison,” Adam Clayton grins.

“We’re actually spoilt-rotten rock stars and we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to,” Bono reveals. “This tour is only a year long and we get to travel the world. And kill people.

“The advantage of being here at this point of this tour is we’ve figured out how to play the songs and I think it’s the greatest show on earth. It’s a rockin’ band and it wasn’t always that way. There were a few scary bits there early on.” Before long, it becomes evident that the show we have just witnessed will be remembered with a similar degree of fright. Bono playfully describes the Perth audience as “Protestant” and then “stoned.”

“When you’ve got a show like this, there is a danger that you’re playing Las Vegas, next to a casino,” Bono says. “I could’ve sworn I saw somebody way back with a chicken supper. That was very scary.”

The casino connection clearly conjures unhappy memories of Vegas 10 months ago. It turns out the band expects a great deal more from their audience than brain-dead gamblers.

“Zoo TV was a show of great ideas and concepts and we had a blast playing with information overload,” says The Edge, “but when we put this tour together, we really wanted the music to be the centrepiece.

“The tension between the size of the production and the fact that there’s four guys onstage was always something we were interested in.On a good night the production just becomes a backdrop, and then some nights – like the first night in Las Vegas – we felt like we were struggling against it. But it’s a fair fight.”

“It’s a hard call to turn a supermarket into a cathedral,” Bono says, “but we’re trying to find the spirit in the machine. We live in a neon time and we’re trying to make it magical. And it’s not trying to be smart-arse or ironic.

“The job of rock’n'roll is to blow people’s heads. Everyone else is into nostalgia. It’s really peculiar to me, that at the fag end of the 20th century, you have all this obsession with the Sixties. Let’s do something that’s forward-looking and fresh! That’s why we came up with this.

“We had in our heads was to make a big sci-fi gospel show. We wanted Martin Luther King in the building. Along with Elvis and anyone else we could find.”

As the good book sayeth, however, it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a fat bastard to enter rock’n'roll heaven. With minimal provocation, talk turns to money and it soon becomes clear that U2’s next outing will be comparatively scaled down.

“I think it’ll have to be,” Bono sighs. “We can’t afford to take this f***ing thing around. It’s madness charging these prices for tickets. It’s ridiculous and we’re not making any money from this.

“One of the things we’ve learned from this tour is that the songs actually travel distances, faster than all the millions of diodes and pixels that we have on the big drive-in movie screen.”

Ah, the final irony. It hits everyone in the room with like a gigantic olive falling off its stick from a great height.

“I’m so proud of this,” Bono says, “but you have to be an engineer, an electrician, a computer scientist, a painter, a video editor, a songwriter, a drummer, a guitarist, a bass player and a singer to do this and maybe the next time I might just wantto be a singer and a songwriter.

“Did I say singer-songwriter?” Bono asks his partners in futurist rock as the band shares a wee chuckle. “After allthese years”

(Thanks to Deseree Stukes for typing this out)