Chef Rejoice

November 2018

Working with passion is more encouraging than depending on experience!

My name is Rejoice from Magudu area near to Pongola town, started working at Amakhosi Safari Lodge in 2000 when it was a camp. There’s actually a lot to talk about during my career at Amakhosi but I will just choose to talk about my current enjoyable position which is being a Chef.

I worked in different departments until I found myself being in the kitchen and training to be a Chef in 2002. It was not easy but as I was willing to learn and found I enjoyed it so much and I found I was doing my job with passion, I survived the hard work and long hours!  I found that I liked working with different people and it really gave me the experience to work as a team, learning from each other, always putting  the customer’s need before our need, I found that we had to be flexible and to be able to have more options for guest’s needs and often we come across whereby there are guests with  lots of dietary requirements and you want them to be happy and also be able to enjoy their food, sometimes it is a challenge but when guests send compliments to us we are all so happy.

The following are the chefs that I worked with:

Mabvuto Panagonna from Malawi, Lamile Naidi from Durban, Andrew Viljoen from Johannesburg, Thys from Cape Town, Lauren Lentz etc. about 15 Chefs that I learned a lot from.

I was also lucky enough to meet Lauren (Head Chef) as she joined us in 2006 and we are still together. It was another opportunity for me to learn something new from her and it was hard work but I learned so much.

Working with passion and something you love doing every day will always want to make you learn something new and I always love to learn new things from different people. I am also gaining more experiences as people hire me to bake them Birthday cakes and wedding cakes and they all love them.  I am also thinking of doing a catering for weddings around my community but it will look at this when the time is right.

The interesting thing about my job is to learn something new every day and if not, that day is like lost to me.

People might tell you IT IS SO DELICIOUS, BUT UNTIL YOU TEST IT YOURSELF, YOU WON’T KNOW!

SO, come and experience our lovely food at Amakhosi Lodge, we will always be there for you and let us know of any dietary requirements you might have, we will always do our best to give you the best meal ever, hope to see you soon.

Chef Rejoice