Liberia Life Hacks

You’ll find them before 10am in buckets on seller's heads. 10 Liberian dollars each (about seven and a half cents), they are especially good if they are still warm and crispy on the outside.  They're not usually greasy and not too sweet but just perfect in the morning with coffee. You won’t regret it.  Enjoy!

Expats tend to be the type that work extra long days and extra long weeks, and sometimes the kitchen gets bare or you can't possibly consider waiting for a taxi and facing a restaurant wait for food.  You might think the conveniences of home, like Uber Eats, aren't available here. You'd be wrong. Today's life hack might change your eating game forever. Cookshop.biz Type it in your browser, select your location, and see the list of all the restaurants that will deliver whatever your heart and palate desires right to your door. It's easy, and it's not any more expensive than going out to the restaurant.  It can take an hour for your food, so be patient, but everything I've gotten has arrived hot and delicious. Enjoy!

One of the things I wondered about a lot before moving to Liberia was where can I run?   I detest running on a treadmill, and the gym here is super expensive anyway. But as a woman running alone, safety is always paramount, and I'm not a fan of running through sewage, or around too many people, or while receiving nonstop harassment from the people I'm running by.  Today's life hack: Sea side, Sinkor.  It's become my favorite place to run.  The roads are good, and wide, and not very busy.  There's a lot of embassies and other buildings with security guards standing around, and the loop down Payne street from 20th down to 9th street and back on Warner is just shy of 3k without any twists, turns, or getting lost.  Not too much harassment either.   Lila Brown is a great restaurant to meet at and eat brunch afterward!  Have a great run! 

So to get to Liberia or elsewhere in West Africa you're guaranteed to enjoy at least one, if not two or three very long flights.  Often these flights start or end very late or are over night, and if you're anything like me, sleep is a premium.  The worst are 6.5ish hour flights across time zones that means you're actually only going to get a few hours of mediocre sleep on the plane. So today's Liberia Life Hack: Order a special meal. Go online and request it at least two days before your flight.  It doesn't matter which special meal you select; most major airlines offer a plethora of options including vegetarian and vegan, low salt, diabetes, halal, kosher, etc. I usually order the vegan option. You get your meal first, before everyone else. It's hot.  And you can finish it and fall asleep often before the person next to you has even gotten their food! When sleep is a premium, that thirty minutes is gold. You tend to get 'healthier' options as

Lila Brown is one of my fav restaurants (if not maybe my fav?) in Monrovia for many reasons.  (here's a multi-hack post!) The wait staff are attentive and kind.  So is the manager.  Some other restaurants could really use some training from them. The food is overall pretty good. The pizza is excellent, the best pizza I've had in Monrovia.  A really good crust and they don't skimp on cheese. The barbecue chicken salad is really delish. So is the goat cheese salad.  The grilled pumpkin salad, meh, go ahead and pass on that.  And go elsewhere for a burger (so I'm told... I haven't actually tried the burgers). The tempura fish burger is good though.  And they have a nice breakfast menu as well. The atmosphere is chill.  You're sitting outside basically, but there's a roof.  I will go there for brunch after a run and not feel weird about being all sweaty sitting there. They showed the whole World Cup, which is where I managed to taste so much of the menu

Netflix.   It works in Liberia.  You don't have as good of a selection as you might have in the US.  (I asked friends for recommendations and I received about forty of them; maybe 6 were available here....) If you're living in a posh apartment with fast wifi all the time, you can disregard this life hack.  This has is for those of us mere mortals who use a data connection and have to keep topping up our data throughout the month. Liberia Life Hack:  Downloading the movies/shows and then watching them uses less data than streaming them. And also you don't ever have to worry about your show getting stopped in the middle because the internet flakes out! Winning. You're welcome. Happy Bingeing.

These are shockingly good fish tacos and have been known to be the sole reason I've left my house some evenings. Life hack: if you don't love raw onions, like me, order them without onions. That's what you're looking at here.  The tomatoes are fresh and theres a little bit of cilantro and a shmear of hot sauce that doesn't cause your tastebuds to numb but does give it a lovely little kick.   Squeeze a little lime juice on it before eating to take it up a notch. If you like raw onions, go for it.  There are a lot, though, you've been warned!  Available at Golden Beach , pairs very nicely with a margarita and a sunset! Enjoy!

These little gems are called Monkey Apples here in Liberia. Elsewhere in the world they're called lychees, and they're delicious. You can buy them a whole lot for $1 on the roadside right now.  Don't just toss them in your mouth - break them open, with your thumbs.  The inside is very juicy.  Toss the inside in your mouth and enjoy the fruity sweetness.  There is a seed in the center, that once you get all the fruity sweetness off of it, you'd want to spit right out.  They're delish, and I'm always surprised by the number of people who just look at them and ask "is that edible?"  Enjoy!

If you're eating your hummus on plain pita, I'm telling you, you're missing out. Buy your plain pita at any grocery store or on the side of the road for $1 or $1.50 for 5 pieces. Cut pita into bits. Literally, use a pair of scissors. It's the easiest way. Stick all the soon-to-be chips in a bowl.  Drizzle on some kind of oil (so that the toppings stick) and then whatever toppings you want!  This is my go-to mixture: olive oil, garlic powder, salt and pepper. But you can use any kind of oil I'm sure, or butter, and any kinds of toppings you like.  Cinnamon sugar for a sweet chip; curry or cayenne for a chip with a kick! Experiment. It's not like you've got a huge investment in these chips. Don't oversalt though!  Spread them out on a pan.  This is three pitas' worth; usually I dump all five on there at once and it's fine.  I just decided to use the other two pitas for something else this time around.  Stick

Far too many people have no idea what a real passion fruit looks like.  They're really missing out, because they're DELICIOUS.  Sweet and tangy and all around wonderful.  Here's the scoop. This is a passion fruit. You do NOT eat the skin.  This passion fruit is the right maturity to pull off a tree, but it is NOT RIPE and will be gross.  Don't eat the smooth, rounded passion fruit.  This is a ripe, ready to eat, delicious passion fruit.  (otherwise known as grenadelle in Francophone countries). It's a bit wrinkly.  If it gets TOO wrinkly, it's dry in the middle and not super enjoyable.  But unlike avocados, your ripeness time is a good few days, so you don't need to panic.  You can slice the passion fruit in half, or if you're really talented, you can just cut off a "cap" on one end of the passion fruit, and suck out the innards.  Those slimey fish-eyeball like things are the delicious fruit you eat.  Scoop it out with

If you've never had masala tea before, you're really missing out.  As a die-hard, life-long coffee drinker, I've really only opened myself to the possibility of enjoying tea in recent years.  Indian food isn't usually one of my favorites, but the promise of social interaction found me enjoying brunch at the one Indian place in Monrovia.  And this tea is dynamite.  You get your own carafe so it stays nice and hot while you linger over tea and friendly chatter.  It's milky and it's spicy - a mix of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and pepper.  It's got a little bite.  Toss in half a sugar cube and it's addicting.  I will definitely be going back just for the tea.  Bonus life hack: Sunday morning brunch is delightful as well.  A savory breakfast is a nice alternative to the usual sweet American breakfasts!  Rangoli Indian restaurant on 8th street, sea side, Sinkor. 

You simply must know about Golden Beach. Second street, Sinkor, all the way to the beach! It's the only real beach access in Monrovia, and the minute the clouds thin enough for the rain to stop and there to be a potential for a nice rain-free evening, this is where you can assuredly find me. I didn't get a good picture of them, but there are tables set up out on the sand, and an attentive waitstaff with a nice drinks and food menu ready to be savored with your toes in the sand and the wind ruffling the palm trees above you. You can sit in the sun or the shade, and there's always a breeze off the sea so there aren't mosquitoes! These were taken on a relatively cloudy night but while the sun doesn't set over the sea (the sea is south, the sun sets kind of along the beach to the right) it's still a really enjoyable place to pass an afternoon or evening chatting away with friends, or alone with a good book.   Bonus life hack: the margarita

Go into the Royal Grand hotel, turn left just inside the door; the registration desk will be on your right, and on your left is the Mecca of all things sweet and wonderful, the Donut Bar.  There's quite a selection; this photo was taken later in the afternoon so the selection was lower than it is in the morning.  You can get jelly donuts, peanut butter, Boston cream, and maple glazed among others; but trust me, if you're a chocolate lover like myself, you need to go straight for these gems here:  They are called Munchkins and they are 2 for $1 (a STEAL) and they. are. the. best.  They're literally a fudgy chocolate brownie like consistency and taste, slightly undone in the center, with a little bit of a crispy outside and add on a glaze on the outside.  Absolute heaven.   They're small but powerful; at $1 for two, you get the double benefit of amazing deliciousness AND a great price!  I wouldn't want more than that, they're super fudgy

Exercise produces endorphins.  Endorphins make you happy.   But finding good, safe exercise options in Monrovia has been a challenge, especially during rainy season.  The gym is super expensive and, after joining one month, I've found it really not worth the money. Liberia life hack: Monrovia Health and Wellness Center Boot Camp! It's in a totally sketch feeling building that was destroyed in the war and is just now starting to be cleaned up.  You have to hike up to the third floor on these really creepy stairs that almost made me turn around the first night I went.  But be brave and climb those stairs, because once you get to the third floor you have a nice studio, though it's not air conditioned, so make sure to bring a towel to wipe the sweat off your face!  Gabe the instructor is AWESOME. He's encouraging and kind but also really pushes you to push yourself and work hard.   There's anywhere from 5 to 12 people depending on the

You CAN find cheese in Liberia, just be prepared to not be picky and to spend more than you're used to! It's all imported, and there's not a whole lot of options, but as long as you're in Monrovia, you will be able to get it.  Today's life hack - if you go to the cheese deli and have them cut you off a hunk of what you're looking for, it's generally a lot cheaper than the prepackaged version!  Most of the major supermarkets in Monrovia have one of these.  Sometimes it's easy to be served and sometimes it's not, but if you can flag someone down, it's definitely the place to buy your mozzarella, cheddar, or gouda, which is especially good on multigrain bread .  You can see this prepackaged mozzarella is $4.50.  I bought this type of cheese when I first moved here, because I assumed the cheese guy would be more expensive.  WRONG!  This bit of Mozzarella I got is twice the weight (435g) and half the cost ($2.72).  Pita piz

If you're anything like me, it doesn't take long in Liberia to crave a good whole grain, nutty, seedy bread. The sweet white stuff sold on the side of the road might be good occasionally, but after a bit it feels like I'm eating cotton candy or bread-flavored air.   The 'whole wheat' sliced bread I've been able to find falls apart super easily and is also relatively tasteless.  You CAN find delicious whole grain bread, you just have to know where to look.   Stop & Shop on 17th and Tubman.   Go to the back left of the store, where the bakery is.  It's usually set on top of the bakery counter! There was a pile there today, when I stopped in, but sometimes there's only one or two loaves. Sometimes you can tell it's been frozen and thawed.  It's still soft and delicious, I promise.    Sometimes you get there and it's still warm, right out of the oven.  Then it's exceptionally delicious and you may accidentally e