You know what they say about having the last laugh, sometimes life can be unpredictable, it's like a river that flows into any direction of space and you can never tell what's behind the space the river flows to. I have learned a valuable lesson from life, never to trample on the fallen, or be boastful of who you think you are and the things you have. This valuable lesson was learned from my dad's debt experience and how he has fared from when his business crashed to date. I have also come to understand that sometimes winning isn't for a moment, or the last man standing after the battle, sometimes it's about striving through time, and watching those who think it's over fall through.
I learned this lesson again on Saturday in a tog of war friendly game between two teams who were competing for a trophy in a family fiesta hosted by my church. I will be telling both stories (first my dad's short story and then the fiesta story). So without further ado, let me jump right into it.
MY DAD'S SHORT STORY
My dad started out very well in business until he found a need to expand. This made him take the first loan of his life from the bank, but then he had unprofessionals surrounding him, who were mostly interested in what they would gain from him and not making his business work. The only friend he had was my mum who unlike every other was striving for the business to succeed. But he would rather listen to the advice coming from his male companions than his wife because he felt she was a woman. He learned his lesson the hard war when the business went bankrupt, and only had to sell everything off to pay back the bank loan.
His male companions who had led him into borrowing from the bank, mismanaged his funds and the business he put under their care, and then stole a lot out of the business decided to borrow him money as a show of love and support but took off his personal properties as collaterals. Soon enough he was in deep shit and that was when he realized the people that were with him. They began to arrest him one after the other, sued him to court just so they could take his properties which weren't even up to half the money they borrowed from him. One in particular borrowed him 6 million naira and took our five bedroom duplex worth 150 million naira as collateral.
My dad in his helpless state couldn't fight back, because he was neither having the money nor resources to do so, the court even ruled out the case against him with the creditors beckoning on his arrest and imprisonment. Somehow when it got to that point, the case was striked off. It's been four years later and many of his genuine creditors have not been paid their money worth over 100 million naira, but for some reason they have all let him go knowing he was dumped by his companions. Two years after the whole issue we discovered they had all planned his death in prison, but because he never went to prison their plan was aborted which is a win for us.
THE FIESTA STORY
The tog of war game is a game that requires two teams of eight members each to hold both sides of a rope, and try to pull the other team to their own end in other to win. For us at the fiesta we had a total of eight team of men competing, and two teams competing in a single round. There was a total of three rounds from which only the winners can move over to the next round. The teams that made it to the final round started competing, of which the team on the left were winning. As a matter of fact the referee was just about to declare them the winner when they lost their grip thinking they had won already. The team on the right who were already struggling to keep up took advantage of that little lose and drew them to their side making them the final winners.
So from both stories, I'm reminded that one thing is certain about life, it's never over until it is over.
