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!