Well, it seems that the author of WordPress MailChimp Framework is on indefinite vacation. So I suggest to you having the same problem as this one is to go through the PHP MCAPI wrapper (http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/downloads/#php) since this one is directly supported by the MailChimp team. The team has updated the wrapper to handle dropped connections.
And yeah, forget about the WordPress MailChimp Framework if you want your sanity.