Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir

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Chapter 1: People Like Us
The bureaucrat was not a happy man, and it didn't take long to understand that I was the source of his irritation. Richard Tambadini was a senior officer in Zimbabwe's Department of Immigration Control. In May 1997, in a drab office in a dreary government

Reader's Guide
1. When the arrival of Tucker's and Vita's luggage in Zimbabwe precedes the granting of Tucker's work permit, Tucker is charged by a senior officer in Zimbabwe's Department of Immigration Control with American arrogance, and he is obliquely accused of

In 1997 foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe. After witnessing the devastating consequences of AIDS and economic disaster on the country's children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage where a critically ill infant, abandoned in a field on the day she was born, was trusted to their care. Within weeks, Chipo, the baby girl whose name means "gift," would come to mean everything to them. Their decision to adopt her, however, would challenge an unspoken social norm: that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children. Against a background of war, terrorism, disease, and unbearable uncertainty about the future, Chipo's true story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love-and dogged determination-can sometimes achieve.

Neely Tucker is a staff writer for the Washington Post. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his family..

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