Food

If you don't care for rice... maybe you shouldn't go to Liberia. (Or Africa in general, or Asia, or India...) Thankfully, we LOVE it... and the meals we had were scrumptious. Now, as I was talking to some girls about Liberian weddings one day, I asked what they might eat at a wedding, you know... as "special" food. They described what we ate everyday in Liberia... namely, dishes with chicken or fish in them. So, we literally ate a special feast each day compared to what is normal. We paid for it... I mean, we didn't expect to eat so well... but we were grateful. It was all so wonderful, and our bodies really needed the extra energy as they were so shocked going from the frigid north of America... to the hot, humid of Liberia.

SO good! Chicken, cabbage-type soup over rice, and the BEST pineapple on earth. NO, I've not tried it in every part of the earth... but really, I don't think you can top this.

I think this was one of my absolute favorites - though it's hard to pick. Cabbage and red palm oil soup for over our rice. DELISH!



A typical dinner scene... when Brenda was part of the fam. :)


Nope... not bananas... they're plantains. Boiled in this case. We almost always had them fried in oil, which makes them much darker orange and almost sticky like a yam might get it you fried it. They are very sweet, and quite good!

Asher posing with his plate.

A vegetable based soup over rice... again, very good!



...just kidding.

A typical lunch... regular or flat bread with a tuna/onion spread... or bread with peanut butter, and fruit. For the first week and a half, we had soda almost every day for lunch (and ice almost every night). Well, I know those things cost extra money, and they are a pain to bring home from the market on a motor bike! We told Mommy she was spoiling us... and then had to explain what we meant b/c "spoil" means to ruin or destroy something in Liberian english. So we told her that she was giving us more than we had at home in this way! We thanked her, but told her we were quite content without it as well. (My kids have never had so much soda in their lives! ~though I didn't care to deny it to them... they earned that and more each day!) Anyway, after that, we had less soda, and had juice or water instead. But she kept giving us ice most nights... she said, "But you are so HOT! We need to help you be comfortable and cool down!"

Small bananas... don't think they have a special name. Uncle Jimmy, one of the people that drove us around often, bought a whole bunch of them for 50 Liberian Dollars (LD). That's like 75 cents. They are SUPER sweet... better than regular bananas by a lot... and the skins are very, very thin. But, of course, you have to eat a lot of them to fill up!

Breakfast... bread, eggs, cream of wheat (or corn meal, or oatmeal)... all of which Anika RAVED over... and often there would be "sausages"... hot dogs cut up and fried. Someone must have told them that Americans need meat at every meal, which is funny, b/c we don't always even have meat with dinner, let alone lunch and breakfast too!

My creative boy was missing a good old American hot dog. So, he took his breakfast "sausages", split his bread the long way, and stuffed a bunch of them in a row.

... a little ketchup... and voila! The breakfast hot dog ~ Liberian style!

After each meal, we'd gather all the dishes to bring back to Mommy Sieh's house. Hawa always wanted to carry the big trays, full of heavy, unstable stuff, on her head. So, we'd try to swap out her load with one a little less precarious... and breakable.

Now onto the food that is more realistic for the children at the mission homes...

Donuts made often in the mornings for the kids. Four basic ingredients, fried up in oil, no sugar.

The cook... I think her name was Esther... showing me the huge pot of rice for the children. It is sitting on the cookstove. Yeah... incredible. It doesn't burn on the bottom. How??? I can manage to burn just about anything. That set-up would just about guarantee it every time!

On the left, you see the palm oil being boiled for the soup that will go over the rice. The orange color is just the foam from cooking it... there is actually not a whole lot there when you compare it to the amount of rice. All in all... not much true nutritional value in the kids' meals.

I know... it's an odd picture to have in here... but the kids (not just mine) all enjoyed a few lollipops thanks to my friends, Marshall and Lisa. In a God-kind-of-thing, He even provided them for free, and they were even organic!

At the Deaf Mission, the girls were getting their fire going. I don't know that they have a cookpot... so it looks like they just build a fire and use bricks from ruined buildings in the bush to set the pot onto.

One of the Deaf Mission students with the bucket of rice. It was passed around to different kids... there are usually not extra containers to be used... so the buckets serve that purpose.

A friend of ours enjoying his rice... and someone's little hand trying to catch what falls! I'll tell ya... food does NOT get wasted there. Other things might... but not food.