How Do Africans Kiss? Black Folk, Tongue Kissing & Love

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The whole tongue thing was a lot. Once again, I had to calm myself down and remember that I was supposed to be moving my tongue too. With my eyes locked on the moon above, I started moving my own tongue, I felt some of the tension leave my body and just as I started to enjoy it, I felt him pulling away. He smiled, I smiled. We’d have to try that again.

By the end of the night, after our third or fourth attempt, I was used to it…and I liked it, just as I suspected I would. When I got home, my sister and mom waited for our customary post-date rundown. Before I could even speak, the foolish grin on my face told them exactly what happened.”He kissed you!” My mom blurted. Still grinning, I nodded. Then my mother asked me about the tongue. I had to be real, “It took me a minute to get used to, but I like it!” More grinning. My mother’s face spread into a sly smile and she said just one word, “Eeww!”

Before I had my own first kiss, I thought my mom was just weird…and a bit selfish, for depriving my poor father. But afterward though, I understood why she wasn’t a fan. That tongue is one strong, domineering muscle and if you’re not ready for it or haven’t been exposed to it, it can be kind of yucky. (Which is why I’ll never understand how folks just start sucking face with people they’ve just met.) Just today, I learned that my mom isn’t alone. There are people, quite a few people, African people who either don’t like or haven’t really ventured into the whole “French kissing” thing. Zina Saro-Wiwa, a British Nigerian filmmaker, writer and reporter, decided to explore this topic by asking African people, from all over the continent, “How do Africans kiss?” as a part of her project, Eaten By The Heart, a film that explores African intimacy and love performance. Though a few of the interviewees, in the video below, were a bit inexperienced on the subject of kissing, particularly with tongue, one of the subjects states very eloquently, that the absence of kissing doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of love as well.

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