No Utensils, No Problem
I was in a man’s house in Afghanistan, and as is tradition, he made us tea. The tea wasn’t great, it was really just warm, dirt-flavored water as far as I could tell. But to be polite, I consumed my cup’s worth. As was expected of me. Next, he gave us some rice. Now, these guys are poor, but it’s rude to turn down food.
What you do is this: take a little bit. An appetizer-sized amount. Eat it relatively slowly and thank them profusely. Easy enough. Well, unfortunately, in this particular instance, the gentleman was lacking in certain utensils, dinnerware, and OSHA standards. The rice was served to us on these slabs of shale this guy used as plates and had an unholy amount of gravel mixed in.
Not to exaggerate, but the pieces of stone in the rice were dancing up to pea-sized. This dude starts munching, so we all follow suit, trying to minimize chewing and maximize swallowing. Again, we ate this rocky rice with our fingers since he had no utensils for us. His teeth were pretty jacked up, so I can only assume he eats rocks regularly.
Regardless, he was a super cool dude, and I hope we were nothing short of gentlemanly in our acceptance of his hospitality.