Figuring out what to do when someone offers you something – food or drink – that you don’t want, or worse yet, something you really don’t like and/or worry will make you sick – is quite the dilemma.

It happened to me while I was involved in a form of an unpaid internship. A local took me along to a sweet shop, on the way describing a local drink she wanted me to try. Sometimes, she told me, she brought a thermos of it with her family on picnics. It was good for your health and tasted good too. I was up for it.

I saw it before I got my cup full and grew apprehensive. What was in it, I wondered aloud. Sugar, water, and…”what is that in bread? That thing that grows?” she asked. Oh, that would be yeast, I said to her. Oh no, I said to myself.

I sat down with my full glass of boza. She was enthusiastically drinking hers. I could smell the yeast in mine. What could I do, scrunch my nose up and tell her I thought it was gross? Suddenly “remember” that I had a yeast allergy? That I was in fact diabetic? There was nothing to do except drink up. Which is what I did.

I have to admit I was already a little under the weather, but I feel sure that this drink contributed to the subsequent downturn of my health. I was affected by it – I won’t go into detail exactly how – for about three days.

I hope I don’t have any similar experience soon, but I’ve mostly written this one off just as something that comes with traveling abroad. I love food and I love trying new things; sometimes I’ll end up trying things I don’t like. Luckily this was more of a preference issue than a true health safety one. Find some of my informal health tips in a previous post, and find some (incomplete) information about boza at Wikipedia.