My story is about the weather in Liberia, the country where I was born and raised. There are two seasons, the rainy season and the dry season. There are six months of rain from May through October, and the dry season is the six months from November through April.

During the rainy season, when I was little, it sometimes rained for many days and nights, and the rivers would flood. I loved the rainy season, because when it was raining, I would go outside in the rain with my brothers, sisters, and other children to play and have rain showers. The rain also provided water for drinking. The rivers flowed freely and provided freshwater fish for eating. The rain also provided water for farmers to grow rice and vegetables: cassavas, potatoes, corn, peppers, and all kinds of foods for eating. During the rainy season, it got cool and nice, and we could sleep well at night.

In the dry season, the weather got very hot throughout the day and night. It got to 100 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit sometimes, and it was difficult to sleep at night. There was no electricity in my village, and there were no fans for cooling down. We opened our widows during the night for cool air from the forest to come through. The village men used their canoes on the rivers to catch fish to eat, and the women used their fishing nets. My village didn’t have any running water. We got water from the river for drinking. We played and swam in the rivers during the dry season. During the dry season, the farmers cleared some parts of the forest and burned bushes for farming. At night, we played under the moonlight that shone clearly. There was no television in our village to watch, so we would tell each other stories under the mango trees.

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Dorris Gbordor is from Liberia. She writes, “My mother and father were Bassa and grew up speaking Bassa. My parents lived in the countryside and were poor. There was no free school unless you lived in the city. Thank God I am here today and able to go to school.” Dorris Gbordor studies with Noemia Nicolas at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Flatbush Adult Learning Center.