![\"Samuelweb\"](\"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Samuelweb-225x300.jpg\")
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Interviewee<\/strong>: Carmella Samuel Description<\/strong>: Carmella Samuel was a school cook in the Virgin Islands.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Boyce<\/strong>: I\u2019m Jeffrey Boyce and it is June 27, 2016. I\u2019m here on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands with Carmella Samuel.<\/p>\n Carmella Samuel<\/strong>: Yep.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Welcome Carmella and thanks for taking the time to talk with me.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Could we begin by you telling me a little bit about yourself, where you were born and where you grew up?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: I was born in Nevis.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Nevis? You\u2019re the first person I\u2019ve talked to from Nevis.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Truly? I was born in Nevis and I come to the Virgin Island. I got married in the Virgin Island. I have seven children.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Boys or girls?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Five girls \u2013 four girls and the rest is boys \u2013 three boys.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: That\u2019s a nice sized family.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Real, real nice. We are all together. And then I start to work at the school lunch, 1990, September.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: September of 1990? So you\u2019ve been doing this a while.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Yes. I work here at least twenty-seven years. I was working at EBO and at work at Lockhart School. But so when they had the hurricane, you know, and I was at Lockhart, OK, they told me to come here. So I came here to work and this is where I stayed until I retire.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: When did you retire?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: I retired three years ago now.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: What was your job title?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: My job title was Cook 1.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Cook 1, OK. What was a typical day like for you? What did you do?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: When I cooked?<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Um-hum.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: I\u2019m going to say I was behind, because she\u2019s the manager. We were Cook 2. I was from Cook 1 to Cook 2, and the job that I do, I really did love the job. It was really good, because the manager encouraged me and she was interested in work that I done, because she could leave me and go anyplace and the work would finish.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: You were dependable.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: [Nods in the affirmative.] And when I came in in the morning she only have to say, \u201cLook,\u201d because she put up signs what to cook. That\u2019s it, and I\u2019m gone with the work, and the children, they will come in at least ten for the lunch. Lunch will be ready. Breakfast will be ready. Everything will be ready. She did not have no problem with me. So, she was regret when I\u2019m retire, because she always saying that she could depend upon me.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: What was your favorite thing to prepare?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Well, in the morning sometime we used to prepare eggs and toast. Sometime we do the cereal. Sometimes we do the bread and like a little sandwich.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Did you ever bake bread when you were here?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Yea, the manager do the bread and give them bread. But when it come around to lunch sometime we do meatball, spaghetti, and sometimes we do hamburgers and bread, and lettuce, tomato, and the fruit. And sometimes we do like mashed potato, and chicken, like we sometimes barbeque chicken. Everything. We mix up the food, but they does eat the food sometime. Not sometime, all the time when I here. I don\u2019t know for now. I don\u2019t know for now.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: What were the kids\u2019 favorites?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: OH, the favorite, they love chicken.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Barbequed chicken?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Barbeque chicken. It\u2019s true chicken. They love chicken and rice. They love chicken and mash. Sometime they love meatball. They love hamburger, like on Friday you give them a light breakfast like hamburger, they\u2019re vegetarian, and the fruit. That\u2019s just Friday. From Monday right down to it, heavy food.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Did you say true chicken?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: True.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: What is that?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: You bake the chicken, put them in the oven, and after you bake the chicken you take them out. You make your gravy, you have all your seasoning and everything done. And you make that gravy, and when the chicken come out you put the gravy over the chicken, you put it back in the oven for five or ten minutes. Barbeque – when they barbeque the chicken they put it in the oven too. They took them out and you have the barbeque like the barbeque sauce, a little sugar, tomato ketchup, and either put onion, either put pepper, red and green pepper, put in the barbeque, and a little, little bit of cayenne pepper. That\u2019ll get a good flavor. And when you do that barbeque and you throw it over it, you rest it back in the oven five minutes and it come out \u2013 mmm \u2013 you lick your finger. And sometimes let us do like casserole \u2013 you ever hear about this casserole?<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: No.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Meat, ground meat, you boil it up, take out that water and the fat, you drain out that fat, and then you put in your seasoning \u2013 onion, garlic, red and green pepper, tomato paste, and you let it simmer down. Then you boil your macaroni, half cooked, and then after half cooked you strain that water out. And after you strain the water out you take that meat and you wrap it up in a tight [makes a twisting motion], and then after you finish you put a little garlic there, cheese, some cheese inside the meat, and then when you come out you put a little cheese on top, make it beautiful. They kill you for that. That is where I were here, but I don\u2019t know how they do it now.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: What changes did you see in the program over the years you were working?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Not changes. Everything is coming real good. And that is when Ms. Isaak was there and everything is coming good. It was good, the time I was here. I didn\u2019t regret and I did not sorry. But I tell you the truth. I used to say, \u201cI retire. Now I retire.\u201d I was sorry, because you know, keep going, make your body good.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Do you have any special stories about special children you served or people you worked with over the years?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: \u00a0Oh, the children, you have children, and you know, it is not all of them going be good. Some going be a problem. Some going give you trouble. But you only have to nourish them, love them, and tell them eat. Up \u2018til now, I tell you, when I walk on the street and I see those children, sometime I forget them, and they say, \u201cDid you forget to feed me?\u201d I say, \u201cOh, yea.\u201d Up to last week one met me up the supermarket and she come right up in me face. I say, \u201cWhat happen to you? I don\u2019t see you.\u201d She say, \u201cYes, I went away.\u201d I say, \u201cHow you doing?\u201d Then she ask me if I still over there. I tell her, \u201cNo.\u201d But I say, \u201cYou\u2019re looking good.\u201d And she say, \u201cYea. Thank you.\u201d [They] still love me. It\u2019s how you treat them and how you make them happy. But some of them, the people that work with, they drive you up, you know, they drive you up, because when you tell them don\u2019t take that, and do it in the way they suppose to do, they want to do it the other way.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: What advice would you give someone who was thinking about trying to get a job in child nutrition today?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Well, I would tell them, \u201cGo in.\u201d And it\u2019s up to them. Do what you could do, and do the best. Feed the children. Speak to them nice, love them, and make sure they eat.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Anything else you\u2019d like to add?<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: Some of the workers, they will give you a hard time, but don\u2019t take them on, don\u2019t take them on. Be nice to them because they always say, \u201cBe nice to your people. Be nice to your folk.\u201d Just tell them love them. Be patient. Be patient. That\u2019s a art. Be patient. \u201cGood morning, Good afternoon\u201d for example. You come in in the lunchroom, \u201cGOOD MORNING.\u201d And we always say, \u201cHow you are today?\u201d That\u2019s the key. \u201cGood Morning, Thank you.\u201d When you get the lunch, \u201cThank you very much.\u201d<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.<\/p>\n CS<\/strong>: I hope I do good.<\/p>\n JB<\/strong>: It was wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Interviewee: Carmella Samuel Interviewer: Jeffrey Boyce Date: June 27, 2016 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5767"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6744,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5767\/revisions\/6744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nInterviewer<\/strong>: Jeffrey Boyce
\nDate<\/strong>: June 27, 2016<\/p>\n