Hello and welcome to my journey. My name is Ikbal Valiyathodi, and what I am sharing today is a deeply personal life story detailing my early working days in Kerala. It explores the harsh financial realities that necessitated a massive shift in my life and chronicles the often-challenging, yet highly rewarding initial steps I took as an expat in Saudi Arabia to build a better, more secure future for my family.
Early Entrepreneurship in Kerala
My professional life began right at home, surrounded by the familiar comforts of my family. Even during my busy student years, I spent nearly all my free time working diligently at my father's local shop. By 1998, I was completely and fully integrated into the daily business operations. I proudly managed the shop solo in my father's absence and eagerly assisted him whenever he was there, absorbing the crucial essentials of local trade, inventory management, and customer service directly under his experienced guidance.
Around the year 2000, my entrepreneurial uncle launched a new distribution agency for the popular confectionery brand Nutrin, actively supplying sweets and candies to nearby local regions. My ambitious cousin Nooru and I eagerly became a core part of this exciting new venture. Though FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) distribution was a completely new field for us, we managed to make significant headway through sheer hard work and relationship building. As our product line successfully expanded and local demand grew, our primary mode of transport proudly upgraded from a rugged, open Jeep to a fully covered delivery van.
📊 Ishabil Fact: The Great Migration
The late 1990s and early 2000s marked an incredibly significant wave of economic migration from Kerala to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Driven entirely by the dream of establishing financial stability and supporting large, extended families back home, millions of Keralites paved the way, creating a powerful cultural and economic bridge between India and Saudi Arabia that still thrives strongly today.
The Gulf Necessity: Seeking Greener Pastures
Despite being happily and actively employed in our growing family business, I faced incredibly steep, mounting financial pressures at home. These heavy responsibilities were primarily related to funding my beloved sisters' traditional marriages, financing the construction of a proper family house, and ultimately securing my own long-term financial future. I quickly and soberly realized that the local income earned in Kerala, given the challenging economic circumstances of the time, would simply not be enough to solve these compounding problems.
I became deeply convinced that only by making the bold move to work in the Gulf could I successfully overcome my family's financial difficulties—a widely held, undeniable truth for many ambitious young men in Kerala during that specific era. With this heavy conviction weighing on my shoulders, I reluctantly, but necessarily, resigned from the distribution agency I had helped build, packed my bags, and fully embraced the bright dream and grand promise of the Gulf.
Landing in the Kingdom and Initial Steps
My life-changing journey as a Saudi expat officially began on March 6, 2002. Bidding a tearful farewell to my family, I flew out of Kozhikode, transited through the busy hub of Mumbai, and finally landed at Dammam Airport in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. From there, I immediately endured a grueling, bone-tiring, nearly 15-hour overland bus journey across the vast, arid desert to finally reach the coastal city of Jeddah.
I spent the very first week simply resting my exhausted body and acclimatizing to the intense Saudi heat. Then, I began working at my uncle's retail store located in the bustling commercial district of Bawadi, situated near the old Jeddah Airport. I used this crucial transitional time to completely immerse myself in the new culture—assisting my uncle with daily tasks, deeply learning the nuances of local retail operations, picking up vital basic Arabic conversational phrases, and mastering simple, budget-friendly cooking for survival. The shop's prime location near the airport made for some incredibly fun plane spotting during my short tea breaks, and actively exploring the lively, neon-lit Bawadi neighborhood remains one of my most fond, nostalgic early memories of the Kingdom.
Simultaneously, I initiated a highly aggressive, persistent job hunt across the city, but my initial, hopeful attempts at securing employment at several large corporate companies were disappointingly unsuccessful. A month and a half passed incredibly quickly as I settled into this uncertain, waiting routine.
💡 Ishabil Tips: Surviving the Expat Transition
For any new expats currently planning their move to the Gulf: Always utilize your initial transit or waiting period to aggressively learn the local spoken language (Arabic) and master basic, independent cooking skills. These two essential survival tools will drastically reduce your initial homesickness, save you crucial money, and make navigating your new workplace communications infinitely smoother!
Job 1: The Sugar Factory—Eight Days of Hard Labor
I soon heard through the expat grapevine about a highly demanding job opportunity at a massive sugar processing company located in Jeddah's industrial zone. The entry-level role was as a general helper for a third-party contracting company handling heavy maintenance work deep within the sweltering factory, paying a mere 6 Riyals per hour.
This punishing job was absolutely unlike anything I had ever physically done in my life. It involved incredibly physically grueling, back-breaking manual labor in extreme temperatures—a level of intense physical hardship I was wholly, completely unprepared for. After exactly eight exhausting, sweat-drenched days of sheer struggle, the contracting company unexpectedly laid off a few of us due to budget cuts. Looking back, those grueling eight days rapidly and permanently taught me the incredibly harsh, unfiltered reality of blue-collar labor in the Gulf.
Following this sudden setback, I spent three humbling days quietly learning the ropes for absolutely free at a local Boofiya (a traditional street-side cafeteria) owned by a fellow, compassionate Keralite. The brutal combination of extremely late nights and incredibly early mornings quickly intensified my recurring, painful migraine headaches. Just as I was barely managing the throbbing pain and questioning my future, the very next opportunity suddenly arrived.
Job 2: The Ice Cream Factory—The 14-Hour Shift
My next formal job placement was deep within the freezing, fast-paced packing section of a massive local ice cream manufacturing company.
| Work Schedule | Shift Details & Compensation |
|---|---|
| Standard Shift | 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM |
| Rest Break | 1 hour strictly allocated for lunch and rest |
| Mandatory Overtime (OT) | 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM (6 exhausting hours) |
| Total Daily Hours | 14 continuous hours of standing and packing |
| Total Monthly Wage | 1,200 Saudi Riyals (inclusive of all daily overtime) |
My daily job requirement was absolutely relentless: physically standing on my feet for an agonizing 14 hours a day, rapidly packing freezing boxes of ice cream on a moving conveyor belt without any significant, restful breaks. The grand total monthly salary, strictly inclusive of all that back-breaking, mandatory overtime, was the then-standard market average of just 1,200 Saudi Riyals.
To make matters even more mentally taxing, I constantly and unfortunately faced intense verbal abuse and loud shouting in rapid Arabic from our highly strict Yemeni Mudeer (manager). Since my working Arabic vocabulary was still incredibly rudimentary at the time, I often blessedly didn't understand the full, insulting extent of his harsh reprimands. I vividly and fondly remember a tired fellow expat colleague jokingly commenting to me on the factory floor: "We struggle enough here just not knowing the local language. Imagine exactly how much worse it would actually be if we clearly understood every single terrible thing he was yelling at us!"
Despite the incredibly long, physically draining hours and the toxic management, I stubbornly persevered on that factory floor for nearly three full months. My absolute only mental and physical respite was the highly anticipated, brief weekly Friday visits to my relatives' homes, which allowed me to temporarily escape the freezing, noisy factory environment.
It was exactly during this highly testing, exhausting time that I proactively inquired about a promising, professional local marketing role at the prestigious Taj Clinic. Although the coveted job was successfully secured after an interview, I was wisely advised to continue my current, punishing factory work temporarily until the new visa paperwork was fully finalized. My incredibly long-term, highly rewarding pursuit of a vastly better, significantly more sustainable professional career in Saudi Arabia had officially begun, deeply marked by sheer, unrelenting effort and unbreakable personal resilience.