Rainy Season Abby Reese Asimos   © Copyright 2026 Abby Reese Asimos

Photo by Pritam Chowdhury at Pexels.

I’ve lost count of the pure rain days. Maybe it’s been a week. But today it let up enough for me to bike to the clinic I volunteer at when school is not in session. Witness widespread malaria. Count pills. Fumble in Bemba. And bike home. Usually I listen to music or audiobooks, but I’m upset at myself right now, so I listened to myself breathe instead as punishment: huffing and puffing up the hill in tandem with the squeak of my rainboots and the click clack of my rusty chain. But even my bike is nicer than most Zambians’. Many ask to ride it. One asked to buy it. I hate saying no but I’m forced to practice it here, which is good. Hard but good.

Many kilometers and close truck encounters later I’m back at my compound. I read the start of the book of Luke and think about Jesus as a baby and of course I start to cry. I saw many fresh babies at the clinic this morning for a postnatal session. I asked if there was anything I could do to help and the nurse only said: “admire them.” They were so beautiful and small and helpless. I gladly obliged.

A knock on my door. There are always knocks on my door. Often my little host siblings Chance and Faith asking for food or juice or wanting a hug. Or someone from far out in the bush who heard rumors of a little foreign girl in town and wants to come see for themselves. That I am real. But right now it is my neighbor, Ba Paul — a kind man and teacher with a sense of humor and ability to converse in English. Naturally, he’s my angel. But he comes bearing tidings of bad news and scant joy.

“Asimos, your crops have died from drought. Do you have 200 kwacha I can borrow?”

Before this rain there were two weeks of dry sky. I didn’t know that was considered drought, though I was suspicious, considering it was and is allegedly rainy season. But I know it was the pigs that got them, ultimately. I tried to chase them away, to defend my soil and seeds, but I am new to war and to gardening. And to pigs. Wishing he didn’t have to put me in such situations, I give Ba Paul the 200 kwacha and grab my sack of potatoes sporting spores mimicking the gnarly hair of Thing One and Thing Two via The Cat in the Hat. I chop them in halves and quarters, respectively, as long as each chunk gets a Dr. Seuss sprout. Now I lead a funeral and the starch is buried and in my eulogy I promise not to let the enemy eat them as they ate their fathers. But I’m mad at myself, remember? And I don’t want my words to be empty anymore. So I’m picking up sticks thinking of the untrue saying. The aforementioned host siblings appear. They are wrestling in a pile of sand next to my house, leftover from the ground-up building. Now, simply an eyesore and a playground. They’re really tossing each other, and it’s still spitting, so the sand is sticking to their deep dark skin in jarring juxtaposition. Maybe I shouldn’t giggle and thus encourage roughhousing. But I do. It’s humorous, the boy/girl struggle. How Chance is a tad bit taller but Faith holds her weight. How they look to me with every takedown for some validation.

Maybe it’s weird, but I wish I could join. Reindeer games. Fight club. I miss my siblings. I miss being a kid. What would the village think if I was spotted throwing my students around? I have to resist, though they tempt me with their mirthful shrieks and beckoning hands. Instead I start to squish sticks around the humped dirt where the potatoes rest peacefully, a pitiful DIY fence. Ba Paul’s children Esther and Joshua wander out of his house to watch me, as they are slightly too young to wrestle, and slightly more well-behaved than my hosts. They’re singing some song, a nursery rhyme it seems, but they put my name in it and it’s apparently the funniest thing Joshua has ever heard. He laughs maniacally at every mention of “Abby,” so hard that Esther and I have to join in laughing too, as if he cast a spell on us. I haven’t heard him laugh this hard since I taught them the word “granola.” Wow, that was a classic. They still bring it up. I look at Esther in solidarity as both of us being under Joshua’s control, and she raises her eyebrows up and down a few times. This is her thing. It’s adorable. It’s like she’s always insinuating something, or wanting the two of us to have a little secret. We can’t understand each other much, but I understand this, as a fellow older sister myself.

But I’m out of sticks, and Chance and Faith have begun to throw the sand, which is a bit more nefarious. So, I say no, which still sounds as choppy and unnatural in my mouth as Zambia’s multitudes of mother tongues. They listen. A miracle. We pivot. Chance and Faith help me collect more sticks. We sing the days of the week song. I’m proud of them for getting all the days right and thankful for the assistance. I’ve never seen them this beige before. But the rain comes stronger now. Too strong to ignore. And I have to leave the potato grave partially unprotected. Esther and Joshua waddle back to their hut but Chance and Faith linger on my porch like they always do, causing a ruckus. Knocking knocking knocking. Usually they leave after I ignore them and pretend to be dead for 20 minutes. But I’m alive. Very much so. And it is still raining.