The palm oil in my mother's kitchen that almost finished my family

My mother called me last week, voice shaking, asking me to come and look at something in her kitchen. I thought it was rat. Chineke, it was not rat. It was the palm oil she bought from a woman at Ogbete market, the one she has been using for three months. The oil was red like danger, red like something that should not be food.

She said the woman told her it was fresh from the village, that it is the best. My mother has been feeding my father with that oil. My father, who has been complaining of stomach pain for weeks, saying it is ulcer. I took the bottle to a pharmacist friend. She said it is dye, nwanne. Just dye and cheap vegetable oil. Our people say the rat that lives in the kitchen does not fear the cat, but this one is different. This one is the market woman smiling at you while she sells you poison.

My mother is 64. She has been buying palm oil from that same woman for two years. Two years of small small poison. I am not even angry at the woman. I am angry at how normal it has become, that we now inspect our food like we are inspecting a crime scene. How do you trust anything in this country anymore?