From Ooty to Dubai
Grab a coffee and enjoy our Yvonne Lobo's amazing story about her expat journey so far!
From Ooty to Dubai
I have had the pleasure of being an expat for the last 25 years. I am from Ooty, a small hill station in Nilgiris in the South of India. I moved to the Gulf in 1994 and lived in Bahrain for the first four years and then moved to Muscat after my first child was born. He is now 21 years old now. I had two more girls, one is 16 and my youngest is 6.
Oman was home for 20 years. We grew to love the peaceful country and it was an amazing place to raise a family. I lost my mom at a very young age of 16 so I missed out on having a mom with me during the initial years of being a mother myself. Being a mother first time around in a foreign land was quite eventful. I had no family around as my siblings live in Australia and India. This led to me making friends and whose friendships have stood the test of time. Its amazing how friendships are created overcoming all boundaries of nationality, religion and colour. These friends were with me thru all the ups and down and that made being an expat so much easier.
I worked with Omantel as a key account manager for 11 years. With this position I discovered I had a desire to excel and achieve success and made it a point to reach whatever targets were set for me. This achievement gave me an opportunity to manage some of the biggest corporates in Oman. I had a very loyal customer base and I simply worked very hard to achieve more. I absolutely enjoyed working there. enjoying the power I had, being on call 24/7 and setting new targets for myself.
Most of my colleagues were local and men so I took it as a challenge to stand out and always achieve the highest sales. We went away often to explore the country side and enjoy the rich heritage and culture of the beautiful country.
Dubai then was just a weekend getaway and we always yearned to go back to the serene and beautiful country. I never ever imagined I would leave Oman to move to another Gulf country but three years ago however, we made a big decision to move to Dubai as my husband got a better job which was going to involve a lot of travelling.
After a lot of debating I finally made a very big decision to quit my job at Omantel as my last daughter was only 3 years old and always wanted mum to be home. I must say quitting when I was at the peak of my career gave me the satisfaction that I have achieved so much and once the decision was made I never looked back.
For a year and half I absolutely enjoyed being a stay at home mom. I loved keeping home. I surrounded myself with my pets, my favourite TV shows, enjoyed cooking different dishes for the kids and looked forward to the presents my husband brought back from his trips. I loved having time on my own when the kids went to school. I binge watched Netflix and was quite content with my life.
In the early part of 2018 I started getting restless. I seemed to have gone from career woman to mom at home with absoutly no contact with the outside world. I felt like I had lost a little bit of myself and desperately needed something to do. One thing I was definitely certain of was I didn’t want to work for someone ever again and be on call 24/7. I was exploring the different ventures that I could become a part of and that is when I came across an advert for Forever Living. I never ever imagined that at the end of my career I would come upon an opportunity that would rock my world. At first I was skeptical and roped my husband in on all the meetings as I am more a heart person and he thinks with his head. I joined and was looking at having something to do and was clueless at the start as I didn’t know anyone in Dubai.
Being someone who likes to achieve, I realized if I wanted to make a success of this business then I had to get out there and meet people. This is when I ventured into the world of networking events. You definitely learn something new every day of your life. I started off as a nervous wreck tying to make friends and talk to people. Eventually I got over the fear and now absolutely love networking. I have had the pleasure of meeting so many people from different walks of life.
Many people through my networking events have joined Forever either as a customer or as a team member and our friendships have grown from strength to strength. There are others who give me referrals or whom I support when it comes to their businesses. Its amazing what Dubai offers. I simply call it the land of opportunity. As an expat in Dubai you have the freedom to start any business and if you work hard success will be yours.
We don’t know what the future will bring. For the moment we as a family love Dubai. We have bought a home here. I have reached the position of Manager in my Forever business and now working on incentives that will let me travel the world with all expenses paid by the company.
Instagram: @mumlovesherbiz
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