The owners of Roraima Duke Lodge consider it their good fortune to have secured the services of Tamby Murphy and Melissa Gill in the kitchen of the high-profile hotel.
With competition in the sector having created a sense of urgency that revolves around the need to raise service standards, Gerry and Debbie Gouveia unhesitatingly declare that they could hardly have expected better of the two young Carnegie School of Home Economics graduates who have been in their employ for the past two years.
Debbie Gouveia told Stabroek Business that Murphy, 23 and Gill, 25, came to the hotel from Carnegie as undergraduates. The Roraima Duke Lodge has been supporting the work of the country’s only institute of its kind by serving as a finishing school for students of Carnegie. For the students, graduation is dependent on the evaluation they receive from Duke Lodge at the end of their six-month stay there.
Each year, Debbie Gouveia told Stabroek Business, the Roraima Duke Lodge affords the Carnegie School of Home Economics two places for its undergraduates. It was the Gouveias’ son, Kevin, a qualified Chef, who evaluated the performance of the two young women during their attachment. The Gouveias have been in the local service sector long enough to have learnt that good help is hard to find and it seems that their culinary skills apart it was their attitudes that recommended them to their employers. Murphy is a Seventh Day Adventist with an appetite for singing and from what this newspaper was told her voice has added value to the ambience of the Duke Lodge kitchen. Gill, Mrs Gouveia says, is simply “a generally happy person.”
That, of course, was a bonus since their employers discerned that their manner was complemented by the skills learnt at Carnegie and sharpened under Kevin’s watchful eye at the Duke Lodge.
As it turns out, Murphy is considered by her employers to be a capable pastry maker whilst Gill’s particular skill is associated with turning out dinners. It seems that the decision to hire them at the end of their attachment was not a difficult one.
The two are proud products of well-known East Coast communities. Gill is a Buxtonian and Murphy’s home is in Guyana’s first village, Victoria; and for all the praises showered on them by their employers they still feel fortunate to work in that environment. They both say that their good fortune reposes in the opportunity that they have been afforded to work in the industry at such a high level. The experience has led them to place an even higher value on their diplomas in Catering and Hospitality and both of them feel certain that they will find rewarding careers in the field.
