I learned the value of money the day I saw my father waiting outside the house of a man who once used to work for us.
I was twelve, standing a few steps behind him. I tried to act normal, like I didn't notice how small he looked that day. His shoulders weren't straight like before. His voice didn't have that same strong tone I grew up hearing. He kept fixing his shirt cuffs, like he used to before important meetings, but this wasn't a meeting. This was him waiting… hoping someone would come out and help.
The glass door reflected both of us. Him trying to hold on to his dignity. Me watching it quietly break.
I didn't cry. I didn't say anything. But that was the moment I made a decision in my heart—one day, no one would ever make me stand on the weaker side of a door again.
But the truth is, our fall had started years before that day.
When I was six, life felt big. Loud. Rich. My father's business was running at full speed, and money was everywhere. Not in bank accounts or cards—in cash. Real cash. I remember nights when cars would come into our driveway, and men would carry heavy sacks inside. I thought it was normal. I thought all fathers worked like that.
I didn't know it was illegal. I didn't know my father was stealing iron ore from industrial sites and selling it in huge amounts. He had more than two hundred men working under him. Trucks used to line up outside warehouses, sometimes fifty at a time, waiting to be loaded. Deals were done at night. Phones kept ringing. People kept coming and going.
And there were parties. Almost every day. Food, drinks, loud music, and new people acting like old friends. Money was spent like it had no end. Back then, my father walked like a man who believed he controlled his own destiny.
He didn't see the fall coming.
Things changed when the people in power changed. The officers and officials who once supported him were replaced. New ones came, and they didn't want a share—they wanted control. My father was warned. Not politely. Clearly.
If he continued, our family would pay the price.
I remember the night he shut everything down. No shouting. No anger. Just silence. A kind of silence that makes you feel like something inside the house has died.
After that, everything went slowly, one piece at a time. The cars were sold. Then the house. Then the land, the watches, everything. We moved into our ancestral home—small, old, and nothing like the life we had before.
The loud house full of people turned into a quiet house full of thoughts.
The only reason we survived was my mother.
She was a junior school teacher. When money was flowing, my father used to tell her she didn't need to work. But she kept her job anyway. That small salary—not even one percent of what he once earned—became our only steady income.
I used to watch her wake up at four in the morning. She'd cook, pack our lunch, get us ready for school, and then leave for work. She came back around six in the evening and still had energy to clean the house, wash utensils, cook dinner, and make sure we had done our homework. She slept around eleven every night.
She never talked about dreams anymore. Her only goal was simple—raise me and my younger sister properly and keep us away from the mess our father's life had created.
My father didn't handle the fall the same way.
Without money and without the people who once surrounded him, he started drinking. Every evening around six, he would leave the house. He came back around four in the morning, drunk, tired, or angry. He slept most of the day, woke up in the evening, ate quietly, and then sat on the sofa just staring ahead. Sometimes I wondered what he saw—maybe the life he lost, playing again and again in his head.
Then he would leave to drink again.
Soon, even groceries became a problem. School fees became a tension. And that's when my father had to do the one thing he never imagined—ask his younger brother for help.
My uncle was doing well in real estate. While our life had gone down, his had gone up. Sometimes he gave us money. Sometimes he brought groceries himself. He paid our school fees, bought us clothes, and made sure we managed.
But no help comes without a reminder.
Every time we accepted something, it felt like another piece of my father's pride breaking.
So when I stood behind him that day outside that man's house, watching him wait… it wasn't just about money.
It was about what happens to a man when the world stops respecting him.
And it was the day I decided I would never let that happen to me.