FOOD HYGIENE

Earlier this week my daughter and I had food poisoning and it was quite bad. At first I thought it was the suya and fruit salad we ate for dinner on Sunday evening.

My daughter's own symptoms started manifesting by Monday morning, she kept stooling and vomiting and was running temperature, I gave her first aid but the body was slow to adjust then I went to the pharmacy at about 9:00am to complain and get some drugs suiting to her symptoms. Since she was running temperature they added Malaria drugs. I got home and gave her the medications and there was little improvement but she was weak and the stooling continued, all the medication I gave her for stooling did not work.

I was still managing my daughter's condition then my own started. At that point I sent out an SOS because I am not understanding how Suya and Fruit Salad since Sunday will be causing damage up until Wednesday. The whole situation just didn't make sense so I started doing some doting and tracing.

Then it hits me, the time my own symptoms started manifesting I had fried yam with stew all home made and the stew consumed was in large quantity then my memory started flashing images in my minds eyes and I remembered I had noticed some foams on top of the stew but I waved it aside thinking it was from all the boiling. But then one thing with stew is that it has a very high resistance to getting bad, even without heating it up a stew can last a whole day sometimes two without any symptoms of spoilage especially those stew that has no water content in it just oil. But then this particular stew kept floating foam. I will heat it up and the moment it's getting cold it's floating foam again.

I had made a big pot of stew to store in the freezer to last me for two weeks, but then the transformer supplying electricity got bad and up until now, about a week and some days it still hasn't been fixed. I knew I had to keep warming the stew especially with the foam I had noticed to avoid spoilage, because spoilage of such large quantity of stew in this period of high inflation is economical wickedness but then the stew was contaminated hence the foam, but I just wasn't cautious enough till it almost killed us.

Another time I had wanted to make Afang soup, I went to the market to grind the Okazi leave with a local grinder as my blender had packed up and I still haven't gotten the opportunity to replace it.

After cooking the Afang soup with the Okazi and consuming it, I slept in the toilet that night and my daughter kept telling me mommy sorry, it was a terrible experience and my survival can be attributed to a miracle.

Now, what does the Okazi and the Stew have in common? I had used the same person in the market to grind them. I do grind with local grinders and I have never had this kind of experience I had with this person. I noticed when he wanted to grind my tomatoes, the water he had used in rinsing the grinder was not enough as the substance that came out of the engine looks like beans and the water was dirty too but before I could tell him to rinse it properly he already poured the tomatoes and pepper mix in.

Immediately after taking a trip down memory lane, it was clear where our problem was coming from, the local grinder is not hygienically cautious and It is these same set of local grinders food vendors use since they grind in large quantities. I was at the market one time and I saw a man loading some food items in his keke napep. If you people see the sack of tomatoes? The tomatoes had melted such that it was submerged in brown liquid with lots of worms swimming in it, or is it the meat that was smelling so bad its almost green in colour? It is worthy to note that the number one aim of most vendors is to make profit even at the expense of our health especially with this period of high inflation.

If I am hungry I'd rather whip up something with what I have at home than to go out there to gamble with my life because what goes into the Stomach cannot easily be retrieved.

I'd choose homemade meal anytime and any day plus being someone who cooks well, it's quite difficult getting a food vendor that can treat my taste buds as should.

PS
ALL PHOTOS ARE MINE

PSS
The Jollof rice and Vegetables have nothing to do with the food poisoning, I am just trying to showoff that I can cook 😃