Another Twist in The Tale

lunch I said to Mr Nazunda I must explain how I plan to choose various staff which I did as
follows:-­‐ good looking locals, who could speak English, I would select for the bars and
restaurant and the ones who weren’t so good looking chef trainees. Mr N. nearly had a heart
attack and said you’re joking Mr Riches and I said no I’m not; what would you do? He never
replied and then said I don’t like the idea but I think that’s the only way we can proceed. I
replied well you come up with something better and I will consider it. I gave my reasons why
… it is more professional to have English speaking local African staff in certain departments
than Africans who only spoke Swahili …he said I agree with you, laughingly he said you carry
on!
By the way before we arrived Head Office had radioed the Manager to arrange for a group of
approximately 100 local male and females to meet us. I then spoke, using Mr N as a translator.
I briefly spoke for about 10 minutes explaining why we were there and you could see
immediately in the crowd some of the locals looking very nervous and frightened and others
with happy smile.
When I asked a question to the group – how many of you have ever travelled from this island
to the mainland at Dar, hands up? I was astounded, I thought all the hands would go up, but
that was not the result, only a few had ever travelled from the island and Mr N explained to
me they are so happy here, they live of the land and many of them didn’t want to go anywhere
else …
We then flew back to Dar Airport and then back to my “office” to plan my next Stage 2,...
which was to design the training kitchens as there were 10 Italian Zannusi kitchen stoves and
ovens waiting to be fitted into a very large kitchen area.
I drew various kitchen designs and finally settled on one, where the stoves would be fitted
back to back in one line 6 ft. away from a wall which housed 6 kitchen sinks all fitted with hot
and cold water.
With this design I planned to have 2 trainees on every stove which equalled 20 trainees, which
in my opinion is too many for a chef instructor to control.
The pressure on me was great, therefore the more trainees we could train in the time period
the better, however it’s not ideal but that’s how the situation was as Head Office found it very
difficult to find a suitable person to organise the training scheme until I came onto the scene!
A lot of chefs with good kitchen experience I believe, were possibly working in hotels etc. and
if they stayed there long enough they would have a nice pension, or they were very shy of the
unknown!
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