A Layne Story
If you don’t know, in Portuguese speaking places the greeting is not a hand-shake, it is cheek kissing. It used to be a bit uncomfortable and unnatural for me, but now it is second-nature and I have to remind myself to resist when we are in other countries.
In Angola, especially Menongue, there is community of returned refugees from Zambia. They fled Angola during the war, but have returned over the past ten years. Because they spent such a long time there, they have lost some cultural actions.
Unbeknownst to me, one of the actions they are no longer accustomed to is the kissing of cheeks. Attending a Zambian church one morning in attempts to be as friendly as possible, we wanted to greet everyone standing outside. I quickly began saying ‘Hello’ and kissing the women’s cheeks. They were a bit hesitant, but that is not always uncommon since I am white.
When it came time to greet the men, I went ahead kissing cheeks and joyfully saying ‘Hello’! One man in particular seemed quite taken aback by me leaning in for the cheek kissing. In his confusion, I wound up with a kiss on lips! Talk about uncomfortable! In effort to make things less awkward, I quickly moved on the next person trying to forget what just happened.
Needless to say, our next visit to that church was full of hand-shaking. =)