Soup is popular. People eat less meat than here, but, since Sierra Leone is a country with a long coastline, fish is very popular. While there are no shopping malls, there are large supermarkets, usually owned by Africans or Indians. There are many Indians in Sierra Leone, also many Chinese and Americans. Often people build a little house for their animals, but they never come into the house.
Most people have televisions in the cities but the countryside has no electricity.
The religions practiced in Sierra Leone are Muslim and Christianity. Unlike Christianity, the Muslim religion is not splintered but unified. My sense of Al, as compared to a man of my culture, is of a gentle, but brilliant, person. While I could, of course, be viewing this man from my own culture-bound stereotypes, I do feel comfortable in his presence and his arrival in my office, where he comes to copy papers for his classes, is always welcome by my office mate and me. He always has a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.