Communal Kitchens for Seniors

When I come across heartwarming writing and causes like this, I can't help but smile. Okay, I'm aware of the efforts, it's just rare to see them flagged this way in the media, mainstream or otherwise, especially when it comes to seniors living in our midst.

This is Rainier Cheung's 'A Senior's Recipe For a Good Life: Food, Friends, and Dignity' for RICE, published on 3 March, 2022. It's a story written and published in partnership with DesignSingapore Council, and one worth reading.

Run by Montfort Care, the six-year-old community kitchen called GoodLife! Makan is located at Block 52 Marine Terrace. Have you visited it? It's a lovely space designed by DP Architects who understand what elder-care design principles mean. It's not just an accessible space. It's also holds clearly labelled signages and illustrations. It goes big on the details that matter.

I've stopped by GoodLife! Makan at Marine Terrace countless of times, and have been privileged to be invited to eat too. I've sent my roster of seniors there to cook (a few fun annual initiatives) as well. Cooking isn't my domain. LOLOL I'll just help out with serving food, clearing plates and washing up. 

Solitude isn’t just a state of being, but also a way of life. How, then, do you convince a bunch of elders who’ve long grown used to living on their own to come out of their shells, both emotionally and physically?

It starts with the bottommost level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — food. Instead of bringing the food to their doors, encouraging them to take active ownership of a communal kitchen meets their physiological need for nourishment without enabling a reclusive behaviour. Thereafter comes love and belonging by fostering a sense of connection, the third level in the hierarchy.

The key to that is in GoodLife! Makan’s design. More specifically, the sense of openness that has curious senior passers-by poking their heads in enquiring if they too could join in the activities. The space GoodLife!Makan sits in was formerly an HDB void deck, and Chee Huang found it essential to make sure the premise retained the same feel of one — by blurring the boundary between the premise and the concrete corridors outside.

My roster of old folks do a 'communal kitchen' too. It's just not done on this scale or in any commercial space and capacity. Unless we get all approval permits and partner with GoodLife! Makan to run it at the few estates we know that would welcome this venture. Anyway. My seniors do it in their own homes. Nobody wants to cook every day. So maybe 6 to 10 of them will come together as a 'family' of diners. They come up with their own roster to see whose kitchen would host the communal meals, they decide for how long kitchen would so, and to cook how many meals a week, and sort out the timings. They also pool resources to plan the menus and buy the ingredients. They've more or less decided to do heavy brunches from 10am to 1pm, and light dinners from 5.30pm to 7.30pm, five times a week. Diners stay on to help with the washing up.

Has Covid affected them? Yes and no. It was painful during the lockdown. But they made it through. They simply moved in (temporarily) with one another to help with the cooking, and we also sought special permissions to do brief checks on them, and for them to help out one another. The moment restrictions eased up, they simply stuck to the five persons permitted to gather, and adjusted.  

If the government is advocating 'family support' for senior care, then we will need well-run private options too, for a growing percentage of seniors who'll be living alone. More of us are choosing to be child-free, or somehow when we get to old age, we're bereft of our children. You can wish, but wishing isn't going to improve facilities and policies. To this end, family support isn't possible. The government policies have become an 'ideal', rather than a workable solution. The traditional family structure' espoused by our government isn't going to fly in a few decades. We don't need sad nursing homes. We need elderly care facilities, thoughtfully structured programs and good staff. This is where private-public partnerships will come in productive and effective. These start now. Why else do you think I've become more active in senior care activities in lately? I'm only getting older and I will need these programs and improved facilities in a few decades.

Mention the communal kitchen to the elderlies of Marine Terrace and they’d all chorus “hou mia!” (Hokkien for ‘good life’) with smiles on their faces. A good life, a fulfilling life, that’s basically everything we’d want our grandparents to have, isn’t it?