EARLY on in his parenthood, Dan Rahim recognised that his life would be fraught with many challenges, but he believes that his method of responding to them made him the person he is today.

Rahim is the father to two children, ages 14 and eight, and if one were to ask him where his journey as a single father began, he would reveal that it stemmed from one main incident: his infidelity to his wife when she was pregnant with his younger child.

“I decided to tell her because I felt… it was a guilt, and I wanted to be the best father that I could be, and being the best father, and bringing up your children in the best way means to do what is right, and so I told her the night about it,” he revealed, during an interview with the Sunday Chronicle.
Upon receipt of the news, his wife was ‘devastated’, Rahim said. She asked for space, but in a few weeks, they decided to put the incident behind them, and work towards building a life together again.

“At the time, we were living by her mother, and while we were there, that’s where everything else started,” he stated.
Rahim and his wife had, at this stage, obtained a plot of land from the Ministry of Housing, and had planned to build their own house, move there and start a family. However, this dream of building a life with his wife and children never became a reality.

After several run-ins with the law and a series of domestic disagreements, Rahim ended up leaving his mother-in-law’s house with his eldest child, in 2014; they lived in a small “ten by ten” prayer room outside his brother’s house for about three years.

During this period, he said his son was under a lot of stress having to wake up early every morning and pray with the adults. He remembers this being one of the lower points of his life.
Through a stroke of luck, Rahim assisted someone to sell a property, and the person, being grateful, asked Rahim what she could do to help him.

“So, I told her, I’m trying to get some money to start a foundation on my land. I have a land up in Herstelling. And she said, ‘okay, I’ll help you’.”
Rahim would receive $360,000 as gratitude for his help, which he would use to start the foundation for the house he now lives in with both his children.
“After I built my foundation, I started building piece by piece. Whenever I worked, I would build,” Rahim recalled.

A single father, Rahim decided to quit his job as a Spare Parts delivery man for Japarts, to focus on raising his children.
“So, I decided to close up shop, and all my dreams, and my aspirations and the things that I was after, I replaced it with my children’s future, and I’m working towards it,” he expressed.
He now rears poultry to make a living for himself and children,

“They have their own rooms, they have good internet, they have AC, they have all the access they wanted, they’re doing very well in school, they’re well-mannered, respectful, and I would say they’re well off,” Rahim said.

While he tries his best to be a great role model for his children, he acknowledges and understands that their mother’s absence from their lives affect them more than they display. His son rarely expresses how he is affected, but he says his daughter finds it difficult to grasp the concept of being in a single-parent family.

“She uses my phone to play Minecraft, and she built a palace. And in it, she put my name, her mother’s name, her brother’s name and her name and hands it to me, and she says, ‘that’s our loving family’.” He explained that she would often refer to their family, inclusive of their mother, as a happy, loving one.

Rahim reiterated that his children are the joy of his life, and he could not ask for a better reward for being a father than having the opportunity to raise his children, and watch them grow.
“Every Father’s Day—and their mother could bear witness to this—they don’t ask me what I want. Because I tell them, what I want, I already have: my children by my side. That’s all I want. They do everything accordingly, and I am very grateful for them,” he said.