Many societies have traditions which involve kissing. Kissing can indicate joy or be used as part of a greeting. Kissing involves the touching of one’s lips to the lips or other body parts, such as the cheek, head or hand of another person. Sometimes people often kiss their friends and or best friends as a way of giving luck or even showing feelings. Source: Wikipedia
To begin with, A handful of observers believe Africans do not kiss in public because they are ashamed or rather find the act of kissing a thing for westerners.
This line of thinking is very wrong.
From all over the world, kissing has universally proven itself to be the best way to speak all of the world’s languages. Even in the animal kingdom, animals enjoy playing with each other sucking their tongues and all.
Studies even reveal that people remember their kiss better than any other first time in their lives, including their first intimate experience.
Africans are principled, not ashamed
The African man is not ashamed to kiss let alone to love. You can’t force an African man to kiss in public because not doing so makes them seem superficial, pointless and irresponsible. Africans will always have cultures that uphold high standards and not kissing in public is one of them.
It is out of respect that an African chooses not to publicly display comportments that belong in the private sphere. Traditional values are undeniably the pillars of an African man’s social conduct.
No matter how much an African man travels or how he gets absorbed into the western world, you can’t force him to deter away from his heritage.
People might say, not kissing in public is to hide his ‘numerous other girlfriends’ but hey, to him, it all boils down to preserving his cultural dignity.
The Kissing gang
The Mursi and Surma people from South Sudan and southwestern Ethiopia have adopted Abstinence from kissing. A radical means to preserve culture. It is still the norm for Mursi women to wear large pottery or wooden plates on their lower lips. These lip-plates are both symbols of Mursi identity and a sign of beauty, female strength and self-esteem.
The Tonga tribe in Mozambique sees kissing as an indecent attack on their basic hygiene.
In Siteki, Swaziland, couples caught kissing passionately in public are obligated to pay a $12 fine.
In Mandja, Central African Republic, native women have the upper lip perforated and adorned with a wooden disc that ends in two hooks.
Kissing in public has been banned in Uganda
Three Moroccan teenagers were arrested in October last year after a photograph of them kissing was posted on Facebook. The young kissing couple (14 and 15) and their photographer were charged with violating public decency, risking up to two years of imprisonment.
And many more.
Nonetheless, in as much as kissing could have been considered a foreign act, it is not necessarily a bad act. It is not just traditional for an African man to get involved in public display of affections. Research has shown that the practice to date remains taboo across the African continent.
