Common story-foreign worker stuck away from home-need Payday Loan

I’m stuck in Dubai with no money and no ticket out of here

Hi, my name is Shalu, I am 33 years old and I desperately need a payday loan to get me home to India. Two years ago I paid about $1,000 to some agency to find me work in the Gulf States where there are reputedly unlimited opportunities for young and energetic workers.

It worked out well. I arrived here in Dubai and soon found myself with a signed contract and working as a junior foreman on floors 45 to 50 on the new Union Bank Headquarters building. Great job! The money was good, the food was delicious and the girls were great.

Last month, at the end of December, I was suddenly told that there is no more work. I am also told that without work, I cannot remain here and must return home. The agency I paid to get me here has disappeared and I am stuck. I literally cannot move. No job and nowhere to go. No salary means no money for food. The money I made since I arrived here a year ago has all gone. Most of it I wired back home to my poor old parents in Uttar Pradesh in northern India. They are small farmers scratching a living from the soil on the Nepalese border.

Getting home

I can manage another week of this but that’s it. The next question is how to get home from here. An air-ticket is out of the question. I can probably find work on a freighter or an oil tanker heading out of the Gulf into the Indian Ocean, which means I will be closer to home – but still far away. Walking around the port here is hard work. Some of these tankers seem to be a mile long. I got shakes of the head at the last two I approached today. Let’s see what the third one says.

I wonder if I can manage to get a payday loan to buy a ticket out of here. We have that system in India and it’s a life saver. Any kind of ticket will do. Aah, India, how I miss you! What a great country you would be if there was only work for all of our 1.1 billion souls. How I would enjoy living there if I could find a decent job in construction.

Life on an oil tanker

Third time lucky! The third tanker grabbed me as a simple watchman. All I have to do is keep an eye on a pressure gauge. The minute the needle goes past the 40 mark, I have to hit the button on the side of the table. Easy, huh? And I get food, I get a bed to sleep on while that Bangladeshi chap, Rejwan, does the night watch, and, listen to this… I get paid!

This is the life for me. My days are spent in the sun under a big straw hat. I’m eating and sleeping well, I have made friends with Zahra, one of the girls in the kitchen and I am getting all kinds of ‘extra rations’. She is from Egypt and she has invited me to come to Cairo with her. Last night I proposed to her, she accepted and I’m going there. I will apply for a payday loan and buy 2 tickets for my parents to come to our wedding.