UNCOVER IMMEASURABLE WEALTH:
HOW SALES MASTERY
AND
BOLD FINANCIAL PLANNING CAN HELP YOU ACHIEVE IT
By Danny Lim
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Danny lim
Cover Design by John Tan
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Table of Contents
Not wanted
Abandoned and unloved
Abusive parents
Earning first pocket money
My first paying job
Tennis court drama
An encounter with the school bully
Darkest moment of my life: Being thrown to the wolves!
Angel to the rescue
Finding solace in studies & sports
Working for keeps
Poly Life: Taking the first step towards independence
In the Army: The best time of my life!
A short stint in sales: Whetting the appetite!
To the UK: Happiest days of my life
Returning home: Saddled with debts
Abandoned yet again & surviving on my own
Secret marriage
Is blood really thicker than water?
PART II: DANNY & THE ART OF SALESMANSHIP
CHAPTER 2: WHY DO PEOPLE SHUN SALESMEN?
What’s wrong with being a salesman?
CHAPTER 3: WHY SELLING IS THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER 4: WHO MAKES THE BEST SALESPERSON?
5.1 Communication skills
5.2 Adding value
5.3 Creating a system
5.4 Achieving the fastest sales record
CHAPTER 6: SALESMANSHIP IN A NUTSHELL
Snapshot #1: Opportunity knocks when you least expected it
Snapshot #2: Your attitude matters
Snapshot #3: Never give up even when the going is tough
Snapshot #4: Play by the rules
Snapshot #5: It’s how you sell not what you sell that matters
Snapshot #6: Remember, there are two sides to a coin
Snapshot #7: Follow-up is the key!
Snapshot #8: Family support and understanding are important
Snapshot #9: Sometimes a little anger is good!
Snapshot #10: Acknowledge and return good deeds
Snapshot #11: Always answer a question with a question
Snapshot #12: Rejection can be good, too
Snapshot #13: On your toes
Snapshot #14: Sometimes, idle talk can be productive
Snapshot #15: Creative selling
Snapshot #16: You never know what you are capable of until you meet adversity
Snapshot #17: Life is unpredictable, be prepared for the worst
Snapshot #18: Sometimes being too kind can kill
Snapshot #19: Keep learning, open your mind
Snapshot #20: Handling pressure
Snapshot #21: Build on the momentum!
Snapshot #22: After sales service
Snapshot #23: Mirroring your clients!
Snapshot #24: Silence is golden
Snapshot #25: Making a stand will get you somewhere
Snapshot #26: Time waits for no man
Snapshot #27: Lingo is the best
Snapshot #28: Time to reflect
Snapshot #29: Discipline is a virtue
Snapshot #30: Survival of the toughest
Snapshot #31: Keep your wits about you
Snapshot #32: Being ‘in situ’ with your clients
CHAPTER 7: SELLING MACHINE TOOLS
Learning the ropes of selling
Consistency is the key
Work smart
Know your product well
Show that you care!
In sales, results are everything!
CHAPTER 8: FROM SALESMAN TO INSURANCE AGENT
New phase -- Life insurance with Great Eastern Life
Cold canvassing: Knocking on doors
My first sale
Creative selling
Selling insurance the Asian way
Bigger company, better leverage?
Reaching the top!
Free from debt at last!
From Great Eastern to AXA Life (investment-link policy)
Biggest career conflict
CHAPTER 10: THE THREE ERAS OF INSURANCE
Insurance now and then
CHAPTER 11: STARTING OVER (AGAIN!)
From insurance agent to independent financial adviser (IFA)
Plan for the best and prepare for the worst!
PART IV: SECURING YOUR FUTURE WITH FINANCIAL PLANNING
CHAPTER 12: FINANCIAL PLANNING IS THE FUTURE
What is financial planning?
Who needs financial planning?
How much for financial planning?
When should one begin financial planning?
Financial planning: A lifelong process
Three aspects of financial planning
CHAPTER 13: A CAREER IN FINANCIAL PLANNING
What is a financial adviser?
Why do we need financial advisers?
Financial adviser vs. insurance agent?
Challenges faced by financial advisers
IFA is the way to go
Qualifications of an IFA
The art of financial planning
Photographs of Danny at various stages of life
PREFACE
People say we should let bygones be bygones; that we should forgive and forget and move on with life but for me forgiving and forgetting does not come easily. I find it difficult to forget the past or to forgive the people who did me wrong in my early life when I was so very young, weak and vulnerable.
The die was cast then, and it is hard now to hold back the flow of events that were unfurled as a result. I wonder if I will ever be able to forgive and forget what happened to the day I die!
For close to thirty years, anger towards those who betrayed me has been simmering within me. The best form of revenge, I always believed, was to show the people who had hurt me that I could do better than they could and that I could be a better person than they ever were!
It would seem now that the anger that burned within me for so long has turned out to be a good thing -- it fueled in me the determination to achieve great things in life. Without that anger and the determination it generated to prove myself, it’s hard to say where I would be today because of my messed up childhood.
The incident that sparked off that great anger happened when I was thirteen. At that tender age, I was left by my parents to be brought up by my uncles and aunties. I still feel sick when I remember how they washed their hands off me -- I feel again the anger, hatred, and resentment I felt then towards the people who had brought me into this world, my parents. How can I ever forget that sense of total abandonment that closed in on me when the very ones who were supposed to love, care for, and protect me gave me up so easily? The most frightening thing that can happen to any young child is to be abandoned by his parents, and that was exactly what happened to me.
The worst part was that they were right there: my parents were there, watching the event unfold but they did nothing to save me. They were content to be spectators! They did not lift a finger to save me; they did not shout out even once to stop me, their child, from the abuse that was being dealt to me. They allowed me to be served to a pack of wolves just so they could save their own hides.
There was nothing I could do to save myself from the voraciousness of fully-grown men and women, my uncles and aunties, when my parents had forsaken me. Yes, the betrayal by my parents has left me deeply scarred emotionally. I cannot say that I have healed from it completely even today. So perhaps it is understandable that I find it extremely difficult to forgive my parents and forget what they did to me. Even now As a thirteen-year-old boy who knew nothing of the world, I was utterly traumatized when my parents abandoned me to my fate. Nothing in my brief life up to then could have prepared me for having my parents turn their backs on me.
As the saying goes, however, there are two sides to every coin. Knowing what I do now of human weakness and life in general, perhaps I am finally ready to see the other side of what happened all those years ago. I may finally be ready to understand my parents’ decision; perhaps I am finally ready to consider the predicament they found themselves in at the time.
You see, I was conceived out of wedlock. My parents were only teenagers. My mother was still in school while my father had dropped out earlier. Because there was suddenly a baby on the way, they were forced by their families into a marriage that neither of them wanted.
There was a lot of tension and animosity between my parents’ families. My maternal grandmother was against the marriage. She wanted my mother to abort me and then marry a rich ‘ang moh’ (caucasian) while my paternal grandmother insisted on the marriage. In the end, it was my maternal great grandmother who stepped in and saved my little life. Being the matriarch of the family, no one dared disagree when she ordered my parents to marry.
After the wedding, my mother moved into the home of my paternal grandparents. The family house was only a flat that was already packed to the brim with twelve persons living there including five uncles and four aunties. Naturally, no one was very excited when my mother and I joined the fold, especially considering the circumstance that had added us to the family.
It was certainly not a conducive environment to grow up in. The flat was crammed, there was no privacy for anyone, there was hardly even space to move, and of course, it was always noisy. Quarrels broke out all the time, as they are bound to under such living conditions. There was no peace at all.
It was certainly not a happy home, so what chance did my childhood have of being happy or wholesome? My parents could offer me no love, and my uncles and aunties sidestepped me like an unwanted puppy that had happened to get in their way. Only my paternal grandmother, who brought me up, showed me attention. In fact, she showered me with much love and kindness.
Although my parents and I lived under one roof, we didn’t behave like a family. There was no love or care given to me. To my parents, I was a nuisance and a total embarrassment.
Looking back on my childhood, I see that I was filled with angst, regret, and frustration. Yet I cannot today say that the situation was all bad, as it taught me to be independent, resourceful, and self-reliant. It developed in me the toughness to deal with life’s challenges.
That self-reliance and toughness have helped me as an adult to achieve many things. I am where I want to be able to do the best I can for my family, clients, and friends. Of course there are bad days when my past comes back to torment me, but it never brings me down so low that I cannot rise again.
Today, my struggle is really with the challenges I face in my life; as a father and a husband; and as a member of society that is constantly changing.
I believe my experiences have value. I believe I have something worthwhile to share with you. My struggles have brought me to a place of victory, and I would like to share my journey with you in the hope that you will reach the same destination. Perhaps you will find something in the pages of my life that will help you deal with a painful past and a changing present in order to build for a clear and certain future in which you have overcome the odds and are where you have always wanted to be.
PART I: DANNY LIM – MY STORY
CHAPTER 1: UNWANTED CHILD
Not wanted
My parents were forced to get married because of me. My father was only 19 and my mother was 17. When she found out that she was pregnant with me, she had to give up school too. No wonder they seemed to prefer that I had never been born – I was evidence of all that they had had to give up, in addition to being evidence of what they had ‘done wrong’, and the evidence of their shame.
Apparently, my maternal grandmother had wanted my mother to have an abortion but her mother, my great grandmother, would have nothing of the sort happen. My grandmother wanted my mother to start anew and marry a Caucasian. In her thinking, all Caucasian men were rich. She wanted my mother to marry a rich man.
However, her plans were thwarted because my paternal grandmother managed to come up with the money (by bidding for the ‘tontine’) to hold a traditional wedding for my parents, and that’s how I managed to make it into this world after all.
Therefore, I owe my life to two grand old ladies -- my maternal great grandmother and my paternal grandmother.
I learned all this from my paternal grandmother, who took care of me as a child growing up in a living hell.
Anyhow, my great grandmother was not poor by any standards. Her family owned three shop lots. One of the shop lots was a coffee shop that was doing very well. When she passed away, my grandmother inherited a lot of money from her.
I still remember my great grandmother vividly because she used to dote on me when I was a toddler. She knew I had been born under ‘unlucky’ circumstances. She lived to the ripe old age of 92. I was nineteen when she died.
I was born in 1967 under a cloud of conflict, and was immediately put under the care of my paternal grandmother as both my parents were very young then.
Still in their teens, they knew nothing about taking care of a baby and had no idea what their responsibilities as parents were. To them, life was to be enjoyed by going out with friends. When they were forced to get married, they were hurtled into a very stressful life full of duties and responsibilities. They had to start earning a living to take care of their ready-made family. With these new pressures suddenly fallen on their young shoulders, they simply had no time to take care of a baby. Besides, they were too dismayed with how things had turned out for themselves to have the inclination to take care of a baby.
That’s how I ended up under my grandmother’s care. She treated me with loving kindness, like many people of her generation. She also believed in giving me a free hand when it came to my education, so I ended up being left to my own devices most of the time.
Much later, my parents had three more children, all girls. The first was born in 1976, leaving a good nine-year gap between her and me. The next was born in 1984 while my youngest sister arrived in 1988.
Abandoned and unloved
My parents were not ready when they had me, and were certainly not ready to get married and start a family when they were forced into marriage, and so they harbored a certain resentment against me and I became their punching bag whenever things went wrong.
My father was the second son of the family. My eldest uncle has four daughters, so that makes me the eldest grandson in the Lim family. That was probably one of the reasons that I became my grandmother’s pet. She took great pains to care for me.
The age difference between my uncles and aunties is between two and three years, and my youngest uncle is only four years my senior. He was born in 1963.
The HDB flats we lived in were only three storeys high. My grandmother’s unit was on the ground floor, and so it was quite big. The flat had two doors, one front door and a back door. I think there were 14 of us staying in that unit! At night there would be people sleeping all over the flat -- in the bedrooms, on the floor, in the living room. Our prized possession at that time was a black-and-white TV that seemed to be switched on day and night. I grew up in an environment that certainly had no peace, no quiet and no privacy.
When I was in Primary 4, my father bought a five-room flat a few blocks away from the old house. My grandmother and three of my younger uncles moved in with us when we left. I finally had a room to sleep in, but I had to share it with my three uncles. There were two double-decker beds in the room, so we each had a nice bed. Being the youngest, I was, of course, assigned to an upper deck. My parents took a room and my grandmother slept in the other bedroom.
Abusive parents
I lived in constant fear especially during my primary-school years. Most of the time, my parents ignored me and treated me as if I were invisible but sometimes when the mood struck, they’d start zooming in on me and I would get picked on, hollered at, derided or beaten up for the smallest mistakes.
I lived in fear of the beatings and the scolding. The worst were the chidings from my father. He would say that I was stupid and worthless. Those words robbed me of any little self-esteem that I had when I was in my early teens.
It came to a stage that I would start to pray every time I came back from school. I would pray that I wouldn’t get whacked that day. Every day that I didn’t get whacked was a day of blessing. That was the kind of fear that I had to deal with every day, and it was a heavy burden indeed for a growing child to bear. Worse still, it made me unable to love my parents. They were the enemies living in the same house as me. My resolve was to move out and get away from my parents as soon as I could gain financial freedom.
I remember an incident that took place when I was in Primary 3. I had tried to ask my father for help with my Math homework. He was very impatient and got angry with me, and every time I gave a wrong answer, he hit me on my ears.
After that incident, I did not ask him for help with homework again. I did not ask him for anything anymore because he had hurt me, not physically but emotionally. He had made me feel so stupid and worthless.
Living in the same house with my parents was like walking on eggshells all the time. Both my parents did not subscribe to gentle parenting. They thought it was normal to scold, berate, and hit a child in the name of discipline and education. Indeed, they scolded me for no obvious reason and at the slightest provocation. I can try to understand their point of view now, but at that time, when I was so young, I felt only the pain of their abuse. After all, I had not caused them to act without considering the consequences of their actions.
When my sister was born, things got worse. At that time, people did not employ maids, so my grandmother and I became the maids; we took care of my sister.
I remember one incident when my sister was learning to walk just before she had turned one. I was minding her at the time, but she had a fall and I could not reach her before she had hurt herself. Hearing her cries, my mother came running into the living room and, without asking what had happened, headed straight for me and whacked me on the head. She just assumed it was my fault that the little toddler had fallen. I was really angry. Who would not have been?
A child turns out to be innocent, good, or corrupt depending on the way he is nurtured and influenced. I was ‘nurtured’ in a chaotic environment lacking in love and kindness, an environment of fear in which I was always wondering when the next ‘bomb’ would explode in my face. I grew up feeling neglected and rejected.
I got beatings from both my parents until I was in Secondary Four, when I was sixteen years old. My father liked to use his fist. He would try not to hit me where the bruise would be visible. My mother, on the other hand, liked to use the kitchen knife. She would storm into the kitchen, take out a knife and threaten me with it. What a childhood!
Earning my pocket money
My parents and I were strangers to one another. We did not spend time like a family. We did not share experiences or laughter or even make eye contact! On their days off from work, my parents preferred to spend time with friends rather than with me.
My parents never thought of giving me pocket money, so I could never enjoy the little things of childhood that other children could, like junk food and soft drink. So when other kids ran to the canteen or shops to buy their little tidbits, I would stand by and watch, and when they sat down to enjoy their snacks, I tried hard not to salivate. If I was really hungry and wanted something to eat, I would have to dash home during play-time to grab a bite. Sometimes one of the other kids would take pity on me and share his or her snack with me, which for a child, is a very generous thing to do.
One day, as I was loitering around the provision shop near my grandparents’ house, I saw some older boys turning in empty beer bottles to the owner for money. Later, I approached the owner and asked, “Uncle, do you buy back empty beer bottles? What is the price?” The man replied, “Big bottle, 10 cents and small bottles, 5 cents each.”
Wow! To me that news was heaven-sent; it was a way to earn some pocket money!
I was staying in Farrer Park at that time. There were many tennis courts around the area. Near the tennis court was a training center for amateur boxers. Many boxers trained there, and they liked to end their training with a drinking session. So I began to frequent this place in search of discarded beer bottles. Since there were no dustbins around the area, the boxers would just throw the bottles into the field next to it. So I’d scour the field for empty bottles. To me, these were treasure, money! They were the source of pocket money. Out of necessity, I had to be resourceful and find a way to take care of my needs.
I would also go around the neighborhood looking for discarded tin cans, especially old condensed milk cans. One tin can was worth three cents at that time. For every ten tin cans I could collect, I could get thirty cents. Thirty cents could buy me a big bowl of noodles or a big plate of wanton mee. Collecting old tin cans was a good way to earn good money, so I diligently tried to collect as many tin cans as I could.
Sometimes it helped in bigger ways than buying me a treat or a snack. It helped towards paying my school fees, too. We had to pay school fees of $12.00 every quarterly. I used to be one of the last ones to pay school fees because it was so difficult getting the money from my father. I would ask my grandmother for the money, and she would have to wait for the right moment to ask my father for it. Then we’d both have to wait for the right moment for him to give me the money. It was quite a ridiculous process, and for me, unnecessarily stressful, just because there was no communication between my father and me.
When I started earning pocket money, things were a little better. However, another problem cropped up. People at home began to suspect that I was stealing their money! Whenever an uncle or aunty lost money, I was the first one they would suspect of having stolen it. They would descend upon me with accusations and questions – Where did I get the money? Why did I have so much money on me? Who gave it to me?
I tried many times to explain that I earned the money from selling old bottles and tin cans that I had collected, but they would not believe me. They would check with the owner of the provision shop downstairs, and only after he verified it would they leave me alone.
Of course, I was hurt. My family did not believe me. They did not know me – they did not know that I was not a thief or a liar. That disappointed me deeply. It also hurt my self-esteem as a young child. I felt that my family was against me; I felt rejected and neglected.
My first paying job
During the school holidays when I was in Primary Six, I earned more pocket money by securing a more stable ‘job’ at a wanton mee stall in the coffee shop downstairs. The coffee shop had just opened for business then and some of the food stalls were looking for helpers. Sensing opportunity, I approached the wanton mee stall-owner for a job. He hired me on the spot. The pay was $3.00 per day and I had to work from 10.30am to 7.30pm. I gladly took the job, and did whatever I was instructed to do; wash the dishes, clean the tables, wait tables, all for $3 per day.
I did not need to collect empty bottles anymore. I got $3 working eight hours a day; that was a lot more money that I got from collecting bottles and tin cans. In fact, I earned about three times more now that when I was looking for bottles and tin cans. In addition, they gave me a free lunch and dinner every day. I did not mind eating wanton mee or leftovers at all. In my mind, it was clearly a win-win situation. The bonus was that I was out of the house for most of the day, and did not have to bear the brunt of my parents’ anger so much.
But when the new school semester began, I had to stop work.
Tennis court drama
In Secondary One, I learned other ways to earn pocket money. As I have mentioned, my house was near a huge football field and a tennis center. The football field had about six pitches while the tennis center had about 10 tennis courts in its compound. There was also a swimming pool next to the tennis center. The whole thing was a huge sport complex, and the complex was always alive with a lot of activity.
Back in the 1980s, tennis was the ‘in’ thing, not golf. Many people, especially rich retirees and expatriates liked the sport. The situation was another opportunity for me to earn some money. I was hanging around the area one day when I noticed several Malay boys picking tennis balls and returning them to the owners for a fee. I decided at once to be a picker as well.
When I arrived at the courts the next day, I noticed an American couple walking towards one of the empty courts. I boldly approached the lady and asked, “Excuse me madam, do you need a ball picker?”
“How much do you charge?” She asked.
I replied, “One dollar for an hour.”
“One dollar? OK, sure.” I was in business!
For the Americans, the charges were dirt cheap, and they were saved the hassle of running all over the court for the balls.
I was very happy, and went home smiling. However, when I returned to the court the next day, there was the original group of ball pickers waiting for me. They were on BMX bicycles. They circled around me, and asked what my business there was. I replied that I was doing the same thing as they were – picking tennis balls for a fee.
They retorted, “No you may not, this is our territory. If you want to be a ball picker, you must first pass our test.”
They wanted to scare me off by challenging me to a fight. But I was not afraid. I don’t know why I wasn’t, I just was not afraid of fighting them. I took up their challenge and asked them to send a representative the next day.
The next day, they arrived in a group, and I came with my timid cousin.
They asked in Malay, “Where is your gang?”
I replied, “This is my gang,” pointing to my cousin. I could sense that my cousin was growing more and more frightened as the gang came closer to us. He asked me in a scared voice, “What do you want me do?”
I said, “Sit down and watch me fight.”
Then one guy who was almost twice my size walked into the center of the circle. I guessed he was the one they had elected to fight me. As he was getting ready, I decided I needed to be smart since size was against me. Before he had finished defining the rules of the fight, I rushed at him and landed a punch on his nose. I used my open palm to hit his nose. I didn’t really use a lot of strength but a gush of blood spewed from his nose. I was taken aback, but he was already doubled over in pain. Sensing victory close at hand, I started to kick him in his back.
He dropped to his knees and cowered before me. He shouted for help, “Tolong! Tolong!”( "Help" in malay) But his friends, who had been watching earlier from their BMX bicycles, had already disappeared. No one was there to help him. Realizing that, I also stopped kicking.
The next day when I went back to the tennis court I heard somebody calling, “Bang! Bang!”(Big Brother). It was the same boy I had fought the day before. It turned out that he was the leader of the group. Now that he had called me ‘Bang’, I had become the unofficial leader of the group!
We soon became friends. The other boys shared information on the going rates for ball picking. They charged $2.00 per hour.
At first I was skeptical about the information, so I tried to test water by threatening, “If you lie to me, I’ll hit you some more.”
They vehemently denied that they were lying, “No we are not lying to you, you are our ‘kawan’.”
“Huh? What is ‘kawan’?” I asked.
“’Kawan’ is friend,” they explained, and so I learned another Malay word.
In fact, I picked up Malay from them... We had fought, made up and become friends. After that we used to hang out and play together wherever we were not ‘working’. Usually after work, at around six or seven o’clock when there were few people playing tennis, we would play football. That was how I learned how to play football.
I became so good at playing football that I was chosen to represent my school in the sport. I was the right-winger in the team. That was the only fun I had in my childhood. I was happy when I was away from home and with friends I could laugh, joke, and play with. The time I spent with them helped to ease the pain I felt when I was at home.
An encounter with the school bully
I went to a mixed school during my secondary years; it was an English school with Chinese as the second language. The school was near my home and was called the “Neighborhood Secondary School”. Its other name was “Pai Kia” School or “Bad Boys’” School.
The first two weeks of Secondary One were unpleasant. There was this boy in my class who just did not like the look of my face. He was bigger than me! He harassed at every given opportunity. I tried to steer clear from him, but he always managed to find me.
The harassment went on for at least a month, until one day, I could not stand it anymore and grabbed hold of a chair and threw it at him. He was so shocked that he never bothered me again after that.
He had thought that because I was smaller than he was, I was an easy prey and that he could have me under his thumb.
But I was not ready to succumb. For me it was a fight for survival. Just try pushing a cat into a corner and see how it responds. It might run for cover at first, but when it is pushed too far it will turn around and bite its aggressor, if only out of fear!
I might have been beaten into submission by my parents at home, but outside my home, I was not afraid of anyone. I was ready to take on anyone who tried to boss me around.
During the first month of Secondary One, I had to pay school fees, and I did this from my earnings as a ball picker. After I had paid the school fees, I had no pocket money, so I asked my father for some. I asked him for seventy cents. It would have to last me the whole week.
My father’s reaction shocked me. He pulled the coins out of his pocket, threw them on the table and began to swear at me using the worst vulgarities I had ever heard. He told me to get lost. I was deeply, deeply hurt, and vowed that from then on, I would never ask him for money. It was a very tough decision for a thirteen-year-old to make, but that was the situation of my life.
Darkest moment of my life: Being thrown to the wolves!
It was also during my secondary school years that I experienced the greatest trauma of my life.
It was around July when school enters the third semester. At that time I was in the afternoon session. When school finished at six o’clock in the late afternoon, I would walk home as fast as I could. It usually took me fifteen to twenty minutes to walk home. One day, I arrived home to find many people there waiting for me to get back.
All my uncles and aunties were there. When I got in, they asked me to put my school bag down and go into my grandmother’s room.
I did as I was told. In my grandmother’s room, my eldest uncle started questioning me. He asked if I had taken money from anyone. Warily, I asked, “What money?”
He asked if I had taken $300 from my grandmother’s drawer. I did not know what had happened. I replied that I had not.
He began to get aggressive. “You had better speak the truth. I am going to ask you one more time. Did you steal the money or not?”
I replied truthfully, “No, I did not.”
He started whacking me with a cane. The rest of the family, uncles, aunties, parents, just stood there and watched.
My eldest uncle had always borne me a grudge because of my birthright. I was the eldest grandson of the Lim family because his four children were all girls. He had resented me since the day I was born. To him, I was an eyesore
Now an opportunity had presented itself to him for revenge and he did so without hesitation. He beat me mercilessly. I cried loudly, powerless to defend myself against an adult so much bigger than I was, but no one came to my aid. Everyone else simply watched the drama that was unfolding before their eyes, transfixed. No one came forward to help me, or even protest, not even my parents.
My uncle kept hitting me until he got tired. His final blow was more forceful than the ones before, and got me on my head. I saw stars, and felt giddy, about to faint.
In my daze, I could make out the reaction of the others. They were finally galvanized into action, suddenly frightened that they had let things go too far. My eldest uncle stopped beating me and directed my youngest aunt, who was twenty-five at the time, to send me to the doctor immediately.
When the doctor saw the cane marks all over my body, he was alarmed. He told my aunt I was clearly a victim of child abuse, and he would have to make a police report. My aunt was petrified. She grabbed me and ran out of the clinic with me.
Everyone was still in the house when we got home. I think they were discussing how to make me confess to the theft of the $300, as they did not believe that I was innocent. In their mind, there wasn’t any doubt that I had stolen the money. But little did they realize that I was not going to admit to something that I had not done.
My aunt told everyone what had happened at the clinic. At that time, I didn’t know there was such a thing as child abuse, otherwise I would have walked to the police station and those adults would have been in a lot of trouble. Back in the 1980s, disciplining a child by beating him was quite normal, but my injuries were grossly severe.
My eldest uncle then asked me to kneel down on a chessboard. Then he drew the outline of my knees against the board with a marker. I was not to move out of the line. I knelt there without moving for I don’t know how long. I lost count of the time and I was hungry. I had not eaten after school, and had not even had a glass of water since getting home from school. I was still in my school uniform.