Kissing fest

In the good old days, it was considered foreign to shake hands except at very special occasions. A retired naval man told me, with typical pride and self assurance, “we only shake hands once: at the first meeting. Never again.” Barristers take it further: shaking hands with another barrister is strictly forbidden.

Then the foreign habit started to spread, and shaking hands became more and more normal. In Africa it is huge, and in some settings you are expected to shake hands with everyone before and after every meeting.

But wait, there’s more. Increasingly, at social occasions when arriving and leaving women must kiss everyone, while men shake hands with men and kiss the women.

To make everything more elaborate, in the Congo we’ve adopted the Belgian/French (not sure which) habit of three kisses to the cheek – left, right, left. Which means that if there’s a big gathering, saying hello and goodbye can take quite a while. Last night we went to a dinner party attended by seven women and 5 men. By my calculations, this means that there were over 100 kisses that evening.

Very friendly.