Bishoftu - The Mission

The mission:

Work with the food and beverage team at the Kuriftu Bishoftu Resort & Spa to help improve guest service, advise on and help incorporate internationally-accepted standards, and poke around in their kitchens to come up with some efficiencies and new menu items. All of this is to be done respecting and integrating Ethiopian traditions and customs.

Though each CESO assignment is unique, there are always patterns and similarities.

Tuckman’s stages of group development are always on my mind during the first few days. The first three days are for forming and storming, and are all about conversations, finding common ground, and gaining trust. I do this with management, staff, and sometimes with guests (especially when I find them wondering who the 6’2” blue-eyed white-guy is, dressed business casual at a hotel/resort). The idea is to collect as much of a 360° view of the operation as possible, in the shortest time possible. The most important things at first are the things that people tell you. The next most important things are the contradictions you spot between the things people tell you. Later in the first week (norming), the staff are figuring me out and realizing that I am simply there to help. The second week is truly where the performing happens. The first week’s planning and scheming starts to bear fruit.

Whereas my other five assignments have been to one-off hotels, this one is to the top resort in a company of nine resorts that is currently building eight more. As such, growth is their main challenge and advantage. This resort is the training ground whereby they staff the other business units. Do well here, and you may find yourself shipped off with a promotion.

The good news is that all management here have the minimum of a baccalaureate degree in hospitality management, but without a lot of practical experience. Cooks have all been hired out of cooking school, but cooking school in Ethiopia is only three months. So …. lots of eager young-folk who are missing hands-on experience, which is not such a bad thing to work with.

After a couple of days of conversations and observations, we agreed on the following six objectives:

1.    Training sessions with dining room leaders on maintaining established standards and the performance management of staff.

2.     Observation of kitchen operations for efficiency, menus, safety/sanitation, cost controls. Recommendations to follow.

3.     Creation of an employee opinion survey. Currently there is no method of gauging employee satisfaction with their jobs.

4.     Refinement of guest survey documents to enable the collection of data that is relevant to the resort’s established service standards.

5.     Review Banquet and Group operations for efficiencies and quality of delivery.

6.     Review and rewrite a la carte menu to reflect current practices in the industry, and test new items with the kitchen team.

How much can a CESO Volunteer Assistant really change in just two weeks? As much as possible, but the hope is that new knowledge and habits will continue after my departure. The key to this, I believe, is the old “teach a man to fish …” analogy. Changes have to be workable without me, and systemic rather than detailed.

Time to roll up the sleeves.

Adaptation

I have learned that the first week of a CESO assignment should be dedicated to observing, listening, and asking plenty of questions. Not everything is as it appears in cultures foreign to ours in Canada. As Stephen Covey writes, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood".

Of course one's first impulse as a volunteer advisor (VA) is to immediately add value and to start making a difference as soon as possible. One immediate, tiny difference I thought I could make at Hotel Copantl was with their guest suggestion boxes. It seemed to me to be a simple Spanish to English translation issue. The word "complaint" would lead to only negative feedback, when we all know that positive feedback is desirable in at least equal measures.

 My suggestion was to change the message to "Guest suggestions", "Guest impressions" or "Guest feedback". Simple, right? This would ensure that the box filled up with something other than complaints, thus providing feedback as to what the hotel was doing well.

Turns out, not only are these complaint boxes the law in Honduras, but the exact wording is the law too.






Another concern arose in that Executive Chef Wilmer was serving beef in the hotel's outlets in two fashions only. Tenderloin was grilled to guests' preferred temperature. Every other cut was sliced thin and grilled or sauteed to medium-well or well-done. The Albertan in me immediately thought this a crime. There are a myriad of cuts on cattle and almost as many preparation methods from roasting to grilling to braising to poaching and more. Something wasn't right here.

An excursion to the Mayan ruins at Copan began to illuminate this issue for me. On the way I saw the Honduran cattle industry at work.

Cattle in Honduras live a simple life of grazing natural grass their whole lives, often on hilly terrain that provides them with plenty of exercise. This leads to generally tougher meat with little fat marbling.

In Alberta, in contrast, beef cattle get relatively little exercise on flat land and end their lives with four to six months in a feedlot where they are "finished" on a rich diet created by nutritionists. This is the secret to the Canadian beef we all know and love (hormones, antibiotics and feedlot issues acknowledged). Undeniably flavourful, tender, juicy.

New York or striploin steaks are a great example of this, at least in Canada. Note the contrast between Honduran striploin steaks and those from Canada.

As imported beef is prohibitively expensive in Honduras, the solution was to work with Chef Wilmer on some moist and slow cooking methods.

One last example of a reminder to seek understanding occurred when I asked Desiree

about swapping-out the cheaper looking paper napkins in the main restaurant for cloth napkins. This, I felt, would significantly raise the overall look and feel of the outlet. Her answer was to spend a few minutes observing her other, largely Honduran, clientele. I saw numerous guests who, once ice water had been poured by a server, placed their paper napkin across the top of their water glass. This was to prevent flies landing on the rim of their glass. Remove the paper napkins from the tables? By doing this I would be adding a step to the workload of a restaurant server by having them fetch paper napkins for guest who would undoubtedly ask for them.

"If speaking is silver, then listening is gold"

- Turkish proverb

Taking Apples To The Bank in San Pedro Sula

One day I joined a few of the fine folks from the Yo Quiero Ser orphanage on one of their occasional excursions to what is known as "the bank" in San Pedro Sula. Unlike the expensive riverfront homes on the Elbow River in Calgary, in this part of the world the slums are often located along a river bank. This way, the river provides a source of water, a laundry facility, and a toilet for those without plumbing.

We loaded up Patricia's pickup truck with green-bags full of second-hand clothing, packages of rice and beans, and four cases of Washington State apples. Apples are rare and expensive in Central America since they come from so far away. They are often only seen at Christmas time and usually only by those with the means to purchase them.

After a short drive to this, the poorest part of the city, we began to cruise through the shacks and makeshift buildings that line the bank's quiet, hot, dusty road. Once we had slowed to a crawl and I had begun to wonder who we were there to help, the street erupted in a flurry of running kids chasing our little truck. My rough estimate was that each 'house' contributed 6-8 children to this crazy street scene.

We handed out a couple of hundred apples in no time, often noting that the more entrepreneurial of the pleading kids had managed to already stuff a couple of them in their pockets. At that point they began to explain that further apples were for their mothers, fathers, grandparents, baby sisters, cousins, etc. We in the back of the truck lightheartedly teased them that they seemed to have many mothers before handing over another apple to their laughter.

We also handed out the clothing, trying to match the gender and size of the articles to those whose hands were outstretched as best as we could in the hot, sweaty chaos. More often than not we tried to hand the clothing, rice, and beans to the mothers who approached us.

The school

The church

New home construction

A short drive away, outside of San Pedro Sula in a rural area, we visited the home of someone who was building a new home of mud and bamboo. Patricia was assisting with the construction of the roof. These mud homes have a life expectancy of approximately eight years, at which point a new one needs to be constructed.

Homes and whole neighbourhoods of this type of construction are common in Honduras.

The original one-room house housing a family of four, now eight years old

The kitchen

The toilet

Laundry facilities

One of two beds

The new house, almost ready for its roof

The mud pit that the family's two children were ferrying the wall material from

Electrical 'system'

Wall detail

Yo quiero ser .....

Of all the things I have experienced in Honduras so far, by far the most touching have been my three visits to "Yo quiero ser ..." What a wonderful place with a great mission.

Five years ago, a Swiss teacher named Patricia moved to Honduras because she wanted to spend her life making an impact in children's lives. Honduras, sadly, provided the biggest opportunity for her to do this. Almost 80% of Hondurans live below the international poverty line with 43% of those living in extreme poverty. In the end, malnourished children total about one million.

Now, with the help of a few Hondurans and the support of some friends back home, she is at once a mother, teacher, provider, protector and friend to 35 kids from infants to 15 years old in an orphanage for street kids. And she's currently building one more cinder-block room to accommodate another three abandoned infants who arrive next month.

Patricia's halo is slightly off-camera, and you
can't see her wings from this angle.

As Patricia explains on her website, "The name "Yo quiero ser ..." (I want to be ...) has a direct relationship with the central guiding principle of the project: children have dreams. They hope that their dreams will be fulfilled one day. Children also have ideals, and idols who they like to imitate. With this in mind they say, "I want to be, I want to be ...". Many children here have lost their opportunity to be anything because of their past, but still hope for the fulfillment of their dreams. "Yo quiero ser ..." wants to give them hope, faith in life again, and an opportunity to be whatever they want to be." (a heads-up: the website is in Swiss-German, but a quick cut-and-paste in Google Translate will fix that right up for you)

All have come from dismal beginnings. Parent-less and living on the streets, malnourished, sick, diseased, abused, full of worms, near death, one with symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome including a curved spine .... take your pick. The only option open to them previously was likely an early death, early prostitution leading to kids of their own, or to join the estimated 100,000 other violent gang members living in a country of only 8 million.


Flash forward to the best part of "Yo quiero ser ..." 

Carlos

When you arrive as a stranger in their walled compound in a not-so-nice part of town, the kids surround the car. When you get out, they line up with huge smiles to hug you, kiss you, say "ola!", and grab your hands. Oh the hands. They always grab your hands. If you spend an hour there, rare is it that you don't have a little hand in each of your hands dragging you around to show you things, one hugging your leg, maybe carrying one in your arms. One in particular will naturally adopt you. It's a different one for every visitor but one will pick you. Carlos picked me.

 
















From terrible beginnings they have become the nicest, most polite, friendliest children I've ever met. Patricia and her staff have poured love into them, and at least double that pours out of them. Somehow, considering their recent circumstances, there is no fear or shyness, just confidence and playful kid-ness.

They spend their days more or less like Canadian kids - learning to survive in the world. Their rooms and closets are spotless. They have chores - washing clothes, washing dishes, manning the razor-wired gate and directing traffic when visitors arrive, setting and cleaning tables at meal times. All of this they do with the same enthusiasm and sense of responsibility as they show in the classroom and when doing their homework. It's beautiful to see them care and look out for each other.

Sometimes Patricia piles them into a van to go on excursions, some of which are to help other kids less fortunate than themselves. Sometimes they just go to the waterpark to play. On Sundays, some parents come by to visit the kids they can no longer care for.


If you ever want to renew your hope in what seems like a bleak world some days, this would be the place to start. You walk away changed, eager to help, and with the ability to see what kind of a community it is possible to create with very little else but love and looking out for each other.

That's a great lesson to (re)learn.

The Canada flag tattoo line-up