Love in the Driest Season by Neely Tucker

I think this song performed by a traditional Zulu choir is appropriate for today's post (I know the Zulu Nation is in the southwest part of South Africa, but I didn't find any Zimbabwe music I liked) .  And I'll say, even though it has nothing to do with this post, the most powerful final scene of any movie I have ever experienced is that last ten minutes of Zulu, made in 1964, starring Michael Caine.

Love in the Driest Season by Neely Tucker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If I could give this book twice as many stars, I would. It is one of the most harrowing, riveting, heartbreaking and beautifully breathtaking books I have ever read and I believe every single person out there needs to read it too.

I remember the eighties when we were at the height of anti-South African sentiment as everyone (quite rightly) condemned apartheid. It has now been thirty years since South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have been freed from their white governments and have been governed by native Africans. How many people who decried white racism has followed up on those countries and studied their conditions today? How many people care?

If you read this book you will care. If you're like me you'll want to race to Zimbabwe or the other countries and adopt a boat load of children.

Except you can't. Not in Zimbabwe anyway, which is where this story takes place.

Neely Tucker was a foreign correspondent who with his wife, Vita, lived in Zimbabwe for a number of years while he covered news about African countries. The AIDS epidemic had wiped out a whole generation of parents leaving a generation of orphans. These babies were often left out for exposure and, if found, put in one of the orphanages that were already overflowing with orphans with few workers, even less qualified workers, and hardly formula or medicine for the infants, all who were sick, many infected with HIV. The death rate was horrific. Children died every week.

One would think that a desperate situation like this would make the government grateful for people who wanted to adopt. Guess again. Neeley and Vita started volunteering at a nearby orphanage, contributing what supplies they could and bringing orphans home on the weekends to give the exhausted workers a break. They fell in love with a baby, Chipa.

Chipa had been found in the desert, a newborn with the umbilical cord still attached, covered with ants. She was screaming as the ants bit her. She, fortunately was discovered, but how many weren't and suffered an agonizing death?

Neeley and Vita began the process to adopt but were told that foreigners were not allowed to adopt native children. So they decided to foster. This also proved almost impossible as the bureaucratic monster caused progress to inch along. I won't bore you with the tedious details, the hours they waited in line to get paper work done, only to have the paper work "lost" or "misplaced" the next time and they'd have to start all over again.

This went on for several months and in the meantime they came across a little boy they loved. They started the process with him as well. First they were able to take him home for the weekends. Like Chipa, he was grossly malnourished and ill but he rallied and become a bouncing baby.

Then one weekend they called the orphanage to get him and were casually informed of his death.

Now this is all sad enough, but the worst is the nightmarish violence that was happening all over Africa as militants slaughtered their way through towns and villages. As a correspondent he was called upon to report all of this. He saw charred remains of women, still holding their babies; he was standing near rubble from a terrorist explosion when he felt a crunch beneath his foot. He looked down to see that he had stepped into the rib cage of a dead child.

When I read about what is going on over there I get mad when citizens of my country talk as if they're living in some kind of dystopian reality because they don't like who got elected president. Go live in any African country for a while. It might give you some refreshing perspective.

Ironically, the President of Zimbabwe treated his people the way he accused the white supremacist government of acting. When President Mugabe was a reporter in the sixties he was jailed and tortured. As President he was the one arresting African journalists and torturing them. I'm sure when he was a school teacher, he was a good teacher. When he was a reporter he was probably a good one. As a president, he was incompetent.

And he was corrupt. Securing kickbacks for his cronies and family, he lived palatially while his countrymen starved. When people began protesting, he needed a scapegoat. Foreigners were handy and so were African journalists. Both were "defaming his character" and turning public opinion against him.

People were tired of his rants and when he decided to pass a law that would allow the government to confiscate land from the remaining white farmers, no one was impressed and he was voted out.

Except he did not go out. He sent henchmen on killing sprees and held another election. He was still voted out. Again he sent henchmen who murdered most of his opposition. He won and was the longest ruling African governor (first as Prime Minister, then as President) until he died last year (2017).

I do not know how the Tuckers endured so much for so many months for the sake of Chipa. I would have had a nervous break down. But they stuck it out and are the proud parents of a beautiful girl.

Tucker's writing is fluid and alive. You are no longer where ever you are sitting to read the\is book. You are in Africa and you can see the people and the Veldt and the heat and the desperation of so many lives.

This is probably going to the top of my favorite books for this year and if I could, I would buy every single one of you a copy.



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