The Tameka Nutrition Restaurant might be small, but the welcome is big!This is how best to describe Sister Bertina’s restaurant at the Okuryangava Market at Ombili in Windhoek, where one can get a meal for as little as N$15.
The meal is not low quality, but Bertina’s motto is that no one should leave with an empty stomach.
“Although I make a bit of money, profit is not the major incentive, but to help people,” she says.
This was one of life’s values taught to her by her grandmother, who brought her up after she returned from exile in Zambia where she was born.
“I started this business in 2012 and named it Devine Wellness, but I realised people did not understand what divine meant and I changed it to Tameka Nutrition Centre.
“I only use fresh vegetables because I know the value of food to the body,” says Albertina Shikongo, a devout Christian whose moniker ‘Sister Bertina’ came during her stint as a police and anti-corruption investigator.
After leaving the police, she was introduced to the food business by the then wife of the Nigerian ambassador to Namibia, who taught her to prepare different healthy foods.
“I do not only fill the belly but also cleanse it. The body needs different types of food to flourish and heal,” she says.
As her food business is to restore health, Bertina says her main customers are people with health challenges, as well as those who know about good food, like doctors.
“I want to help people with cancer, diabetics, high blood pressure and those with tuberculosis,” she says, adding that most clients come to her through referrals.
She was inspired to enter the industry after she suffered a miscarriage in 2009 and wanted to know why her body was not healing as fast as she expected it to, and she realised she never had time to eat well.
“I was always busy, just on the road, that’s why I don’t like to work hard, because it destroys the body,” she says.
What is special about her food?
“When I give my clients well-cooked vegetables and meat, they always come back and give testimonies about their improved health,” says the well-travelled Bertina, who has learnt from different countries and cultures.
Bertina says the biggest challenge in her business is that people do not know food and they cannot cook well.
“We just cook for the sake of cooking and in the process lose some nutritional value beneficial to our bodies.
“She says people must eat what is available and in season for them to get the maximum benefits.”
November is a season for watermelons. Eat watermelon to flush out all the toxins. So, like now, we are going into winter.
“Before winter, we have a lot of okra in Namibia.
Okra is good for detecting disease in the body and prepares it for winter, so I’m saying we must eat food according to the seasons.
“In addition to the Tameka restaurant, Shikongo also runs a school to help children with learning difficulties.”
Some of these children tell me their teachers call them hard-heads who must go for afternoon classes. Instead, they come to me.”
How does she juggle her time?
“I stay with the children in the morning, just for entertainment. Then when the teacher starts, I come to my business,” she says.
– email: matthew@namibian.com.na
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