It's not really safe out there anymore. Times are hard, and I often wonder what went wrong or what changed. Could it be that it's been like this all along, and I just didn't notice because I wasn't in the position and frame of mind that I am in now?
Pumpkin leaves
Growing up, everything seemed safe. We farmed some of our food, but we bought more than we grew. Recently, however, things have changed drastically. Now, buying food items from the market feels like an extreme hazard.
Take my personal experience, for example. We bought some beans a few months ago. After washing and cooking them like we usually do, my husband and I started purging. We purged all through the night until the next morning.
We had bought a full "painter" of these beans, so throwing them away wasn't an easy option. It wasn't that we didn't understand the danger, but we had bought those beans with our very last cash after going three days without food. 😂 Tell me, if you were in our shoes, would you have thrown the beans away?
We kept eating the beans and continued purging because it was the only food we had. As we ate, I kept praying that the seller hadn't eaten from the same batch, because she was pregnant at the time.
When we eventually met with the seller and complained, her response shocked us. She casually said, "Oh, sorry, it's the Sniper they used to preserve the beans. They applied it before sending it to us." Huh!? 😱
You can imagine our shock. My husband and I just stared at each other. The terrifying reality is that it’s not just the beans; it's the same with almost every edible item you can find in the market today.
Vegetables, palm oil, beans, fufu, common fufu 🤔, garri, rice, and the list goes on.
You might ask, "How do we avoid all this?" Honestly, it is incredibly difficult, but we can take control of certain things ourselves. It starts with growing some of what we eat. You can find a small space and farm your own vegetables, just like I do.
Water leaves
You can also pivot to buying raw palm fruit to extract your own oil instead of buying heavily adulterated palm oil. At least with the raw fruit, you know exactly what you are consuming. That is how my family and I have been surviving for a year now.
As for fufu and garri, if you can't process them yourself, consider switching to yam. Boil it, pound it, and eat it as your swallow. Some might argue that yam is too expensive. Oh, yeah? Hospital bills are much more expensive!
Try to find safer alternatives for yourself and your family. Please, stay safe out there.