Love in the Driest Season
A Masterful Family Memoir by Foreign Correspondent, Neely Tucker
Dec 9, 2008
Love in the Driest Season opens with a traumatic scene, and the drama doesn't abate until the very last page.
A Series of Events Beyond Neely Tucker’s Measure
"There are times in life, no more than two or three,” Tucker recounts, “when everything changes and you find yourself swept along in a series of events that are beyond your measure."
The events Tucker speaks of begin in 1998, as a Zimbabwean baby girl is left to die beneath an acacia tree. When a woman finally discovers the infant, the little girl’s ear and umbilical cord are already ravaged by feasting swarms of ants.
If readers can manage to get through the description of this infant only hours old left alone in the elements, before abandoning the book in a flood of emotion, a warm and beautiful tale of adoption unfolds.
Neely and his wife Vita, first meet the little girl in an orphanage where they volunteer. Both Tucker and his wife fall in love with the abandoned child who’d been given the name Chipo which means “gift” in the Shona language. They begin the grueling process of applying to be the little girl’s foster parents, but the odds are not in their favor. Since Neely is a white American, government officials automatically treat him with disdain. When Tuckers luggage arrives in the country a few days before his work permit is completed, for example, an official accuses him, "You think little black Zimbabwe needs big white American men like you.” This outright racism combined with Zimbabwean taboos concerning whites wanting to adopt black babies makes the process of adoption almost unimaginable.
Odds aren’t in favor for Chipo either. She weighs only four pounds and a few ounces. Shortly after coming to the orphanage, Chipo contracts pneumonia and has no strength to fight off the disease. Add to that, she’s staying in an orphanage whose mortality rate is astronomical even for babies in better health than she.
Neely and Vita Fight the System
Chipo struggles for every breath. And at one point, Vita rushes her to a reputable hospital rather than the clinic recommended by the orphanage, in a fateful split second decision which certainly saves the little girl’s life. Miraculously, on two accounts, Chipo lives and is permitted to stay in the foster care of Neely and Vita.
As door after door is slammed in the couple’s face, adoption seems impossible and Neely and Vita resolve to live in Zimbabwe as Chipo’s foster parents indefinitely. But when the country plunges further into chaos and Nelly is declared an enemy of the state along with all foreign journalists, the couple knows their time in Zimbabwe is short. The memoir takes on a dramatic race against the clock.
Issues Addressed in Tucker’s Memoir
Racism is a core theme throughout Love in the Driest Season. Tucker, raised in rural Mississippi, discovered the toxic stereotypes and attitudes which surrounded him during his formative years. "I began to get a sense of where I was,” He writes. “It would eventually form one of the central lessons of my personal and professional life: I had been raised in the heart of the most racist state in America, and as a child, I had accepted the perverse as normal."
Tucker eventually falls in love with Vita, his black next door neighbor in Detroit Michigan. Vita agrees to accompany Neely to Africa and there, the couple embarks on the journey destined to play such a formative role in their relationship.
In an ironic twist of fate, Neely describes the disapproving glares and chilling condemnation the couple feels whenever they take Chipo into Zimbabwean society as a family. Even some of the couples closest friends have difficulty accepting Neely’s motives for adoption.
Adoption and what constitutes a true family is the second prevailing theme in Tucker’s memoir. The themes are emotional ones, making Love in the Driest Season a challenging, and at times, exhausting read. Readers who aren’t afraid to tackle a cathartic piece of literature though, will certainly be glad they made the effort.
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