By Loretta B Manele
Who said dealing with food is an easy job?
For Charmaine Rose Kuku, National Referral Hospital’s (NRH) Kitchen Manageress, this is not an easy task nonetheless she works hard and loves her job.
Apart from making sure patients at the hospital are well fed three times a day, 36-year-old Kuku is also a wife and a mother of one.
She is a pure Western province islander whose mom is from Vella La Vella and North New Georgia and whose dad comes from the lovely Marovo islands and Roviana.
Kuku studied in Fiji National University, College of Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health majoring in Nutrition and Dietetics and completed her studies in 2014.
After completing her studies, she did her attachment at a hospital there which compared to the Solomon Islands was way ahead in terms of a lot of things and resources.
Whilst working it was from this experience that she saw areas where the country or the hospital in particular could improve in especially in the services provided to the public.
She saw a lot of opportunities for improvement and if we could only tap into these opportunities, it would bring us to another level in regards to our health services.
Anyways, let’s dive into what’s it like managing a kitchen that serves a lot of patients on a daily basis.
Her job is to mainly look after food services, preparation of meals, everything for patients as well as to feed the guardians or family members that accompany the sick patients.
For the clinical side of the hospital, in any case where the doctors see fit for her, she also steps in to help out with food services and clinical services.
This is everything to do with food, for healing purposes for the patients and in ensuring that patients don’t go hungry.
Alongside Kuku, she has two colleagues who work with her, one is a dietician and the other is the kitchen supply officer.
Their job is to provide food three times a day. While this sounds simple the actual job especially when it’s at a hospital is much challenging than words can express.
At the hospital, Kuku and her team cater to around more than 300 beds of which are not fully occupied because they usually cater to between 250 to 300 occupancies.
Meanwhile this is not the normal number of patients they deal with because patients can be discharged at any time when the doctors see it fit and there are also outpatients who are waiting to come in and fill in those unoccupied beds.
One challenge for Kuku as the kitchen manageress is ensuring that patients are fed.
For her this is quite hectic and very challenging because the number of patients is not the same every day.
On top of that they don’t only feed the patients, but also the guardians who come to look after the patients.
“So sometimes you are looking at one to two guardians and the patient. So, you are looking at about 600 plus people who we feed per meal and we serve three meals per day”
While this is quite expensive looking at the cost of food at the moment, Kuku says everyone has to eat.
They also have a food ration contract where they have suppliers who deliver them food for the whole year.
The delivery is done three times a week; on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to ensure the hospital doesn’t run out of food.
While they have their own challenges in the kitchen the food suppliers are also facing challenges of their own.
There are only two challenges that suppliers are facing. One is if there is a case of any natural disaster, it can cause them to slow down in their services and that’s regarding the quantity of supplies they deliver while the other challenge is they may hold back their supplies if there is a delay in payment.
On the other hand, while local farmers face these same challenges on the bright side, they can still sell their produce elsewhere.
Interestingly, rice is not on the menu so they have increased their order of root crops aside from the normal order of 300kg of kumara and 300kg of cassava.
Pana, yam and taro are also included but bought at prices per kilo.
Kuku thinks healthy eating is the only way forward for the country in the sense of looking at how we struggle for medications to arrive or how we anticipate for their release from where they are stored.
She sees that apart from depending on medication, the country has natural remedies in our local foods which we can consume so as to avoid getting sick.
Kuku’s overall message to the public is if we can have this mindset and shift from our current eating practices.
While it won’t happen overnight, she says we should take one step at a time.
Kuku said there are people out there that can offer help.
“For example, if you want to make a change in the way you eat there is a nutritionist that can help you with that”
Kuku is positive that choosing healthier food or healthier eating practices and methods is one way forward to lessen the burden of the country we are currently facing.
During the Covid 19 period Kuku was already working at the hospital.
At the beginning it was just her, their dietician officer was a nutrition officer for Buala. So, when everyone left, Kuku took up her current role which left her former position vacant. The dietician then applied for her former post and it was just the two of them working at the time.
It was very challenging experience for the both of them especially working during the Covid 19 period but a nice learning experience where they had to look after patients and feed the working officers because they were isolated.
This year, those who are working as nutritionists at the hospital like Kuku are still in their good years while the senior ones have gone out to work for NGOs.
Kuku has learned a lot from the challenges and struggles faced along the way but is determined that we are getting there in improving health services in the country.
Although they are a very small department at the end of the day food is very important to them.
Kuku really enjoys her work and loves her job.
“We’re talking about what we eat on a daily basis so when we talk with patients we get to understand their background.
We get to understand whether or not they can afford food and at the same time we can share ideas and give suggestions on how they can improve the way they eat just by giving an idea on how to make simple meal plans from simple food”
At the end of the day, if they’re happy Kuku and her team are happy.
They love working with anything that has to do with food.
