I found a fingernail in my juice.

By Amy Esterhuizen

It’s twelve o’ clock on Tuesday and I’m starving! I feel annoyed when I think that this was usually a favourite time of day, lunch time, when I got to eat a good meal that I’d been looking forward to. I drag myself to the Jan Smuts Dining Hall. Walking up the stairs I can already smell the ‘fish in batter’ and hold my breath a little. Shouting, banging of trays and an indescribable stench all make for the atmosphere. Once finally finding some cutlery, I get to the ‘chip machine’, “Halaal fast!” one of the catering staff shouts. Thank God, if it was default I don’t know what I would do. My friend in front of me receives her plate of ‘fish in batter’ and says with a disgusted look on her face, “You’re so lucky.” The catering staff looks blankly at me, “uh Halaal fast food,” I say. She gives me a suspicious glance, as if I’m trying to cheat the ‘default’ system, and slaps a greasy chicken pizza along with some even greasier chips on my plate. I take the plate from her before she throws it down on the counter. “Wow, whatever happened to a ‘friendly and hospitable environment’,” I mumble to myself. My friend calls me over to the free seats she has just discovered, I walk over and it down. “Sick!” Someone else’s left over chutney sticks to my arm. Looking down at my food, and the pool of old oil surrounding it I start to wonder if I am really going to eat this and make my way to the ‘salad bar’. Wilted lettuce is all that remains of the salad but I take some anyway, at least it’s not oily! “No, uh not again!” my friend looks at me and says, “What again?” “A worm in my salad again!” I exclaim. At this point we have both lost our appetite and have been so put off by the dining hall that we decide to leave and eat ‘vending machine food’ instead.

The dining hall is usually not a student’s favourite place and we all know that the food will never be as it was at home. Cooking in bulk and often without much interest obviously makes food less appealing, as quantity becomes more important than quality. Students have come to accept this. But the nutritional value of meals, hygiene and hospitable service that the Catering Services at Rhodes University promises is often questionable.

Rhodes University’s Catering Services allows students to choose from eight options for each meal. The meals range from fast food to ‘health platter’ and it is the student’s responsibility to make the choice between the pie and chips or the chicken salad. Even though there are these options and some may be healthier than others, the overall nutritional value and quality of the food leaves much to be desired. In most meals one will find an abundance of carbohydrates and copious amounts of oil, for example the ‘hake in batter’, which consists of deep fried chips, oily fried fish in a thick layer of batter and vegetables that have been overcooked. As for health platter, I would like know how a few strips of chicken smothered in mayonnaise on a thin bed of lettuce or an oily saucy stir-fried mixture is considered healthy. The meals at the dining halls claim to be ‘well-balanced’, but when receiving ‘Southern Fried Chicken’ with mash and no vegetables, you start to question this claim. No wonder so many first years fall victim to ‘first year spread’! The food they are receiving is usually extremely fattening or just tastes like fish oil. This is why many students supplement their diet with junk food from the vending machine or bread and butter. As Jen, another first year student explains on her blog, “‘toast’ is not just a cooked piece of bread, it becomes a social dining hall activity and filler when res food disappoints (so in other words you eat it every day).” And she goes on to explain how this will lead to weight gain.

The hygiene in the dinning hall is often something most students do not like to talk about, and those who have done community service in the kitchen often stop going to the dinning hall for a week or two in order to mentally prepare themselves for their return. I personally have found a fingernail in my juice, many worms in my salad and hair in my food. The service in every dining hall differs, but from my experience I definitely have not been treated with “respect and friendship”. I have been accused of lying about my meal booking and received rude responses when asking for more salad, knives, plates and bread (which seem to run out so often).

I understand that the dining hall can not always run perfectly and that the food will not always be desirable, but when the problem persists and nothing is done to improve the situation, even after continuous complaints form many students, I start to wonder how much the University actually cares about the services us students receive. Food is an important part of life. The cost of residence is expensive, and many students would like to see an improvement in the dining hall. Because of the state of some of the dining halls, much food is wasted and this is very unfortunate considering that people just a few kilometres away in poorer areas of Grahamstown struggle to feed themselves everyday. I just hope that the University and Catering Services will start to listen to students complaints and make a change.