This is the 41st instalment of Diaspora Diaries, a regular series in Nepali Times with stories of Nepalis living and working abroad.
Even as a kid, I could feel my family's standard of living improve when my father left for Iraq after a failed trucking business in Nepal.
It crept up in small ways. Instead of five rupees for lunch money, I now got ten. Or the clothes my mother bought me were of a better quality. Birthday celebrations got bigger.
Immediately after Iraq, he hopped on a plane to the UAE to work at an Abu Dhabi-based hospital as a supervisor of security guards. It was a relatively easy job, and he earned well.
I am not sure why, but the UAE has fascinated me ever since. I suppose part of it has to do with familiarity, as I watched YouTube videos from a young age to learn more about the country where my father was working.
When family members encouraged me to go to Australia or the UK for further studies, I figured the UAE was a better option as I did not want to spend my father's hard earned money to go elsewhere. I was well aware of his struggle and sacrifice, and the UAE felt like a better fit for financial reasons.
After my 12th, I headed to the UAE on a family visa that my father arranged. On my second day in Dubai, I passed a walk-in interview for a salesman job at a retail store. I also did my bachelors in business administration over weekends at Jaipur University.
I was hired as a salesman at a clothing company, but most of my responsibilities were that of a stock boy. One day I got the chance to showcase my salesmanship to the higher ups at a sales event at the World Trade Centre in Dubai. Impressed, they pushed me to take on more front-desk sales related tasks.
I outperformed my peers, but I was not satisfied. My next goal was to become a store manager. I took it upon myself to learn various skills including bookkeeping, merchandising, setting schedules of staff and preparing sales reports. To learn these skills, I arrived at the store before opening and left after closing. Those extra hours did not translate to overtime pay, and I left the store only to sleep.
I soon saw the fruits of my labour when my sales numbers landed me opportunities to train new hirees at the company headquarters. The networking allowed me to get a store manager job at our branch at the Ibn Battuta Mall.
We Nepalis are indeed a hard-working, honest bunch, and there is a reason why we have built a strong reputation abroad amongst employers.
I did not get to meet my father much because he was based in Abu Dhabi and I was in Dubai. His schedule was more flexible, so he would sometimes come to see me and we would go eat at Nepali restaurants.
I did not share my struggles in the UAE with my father, I just wanted him to know the happy bits.
Life in Dubai was not easy. There were 8 of us from five nationalities crammed into a small room. I decided with a Nepali that I got along with to get our own place. It was a tiny 7 by 4.5 feet room that had just enough space for a bunk bed and a tiny fridge. We lived frugally, a large chunk of my earnings went on rent and school fees.
Living paycheck by paycheck for me meant starting off the month strong and running dry as it ended. Towards the end of the month, I would have to resort to loans from friends, or I had to stop eating out and innovate to make food last longer by adding water to fried lentils bought in the market for one dirham, or living off white rice and fried sausages, which cost peanuts.
After the store manager job, I started dreaming bigger. I was transferred to the head office and had my eyes on the area manager role. But I also had other aspirations that would interrupt my career progression -- I started toying with the idea of returning to Nepal.
I was in my mid-20s, and there was pressure to get married and have children. With those added responsibilities, I would not be able to choose a risky career path like entrepreneurship, my calling. I had witnessed what was possible with hard work in Dubai during my 3.5 years there. I figured if I failed in Nepal, I could always return again for a job.
It was not easy to convince my family, they wanted me to head to greener pastures like the US or Australia and not return to Nepal.
