Kissy Man

Unfortunately this picture is one of a number that I took back in our Kenema days that I am unable to remember the exact circumstances both of the picture and of the person. In my files he is labeled as Kissy Man. As I have said previously I was often asked to take pictures of people especially in our area of Kenema. This may have been one such time. Whatever the circumstance, I usually ended up making a print and giving these away. I presumed that I must have done this in this case. In our neighborhood there were a number of members of the Kissy ethnic group (they lived to our east along the Sierra Leone and Liberian border). Kenema, being the seat of the Eastern Province, had many ethnic groups in those days. The Mende predominated, however, given Kenema's rich commerce, and its proximity to the diamond digging areas of the country, many other groups migrated to the area for work.