How many men can muster the courage to approach a total stranger in the street and ask for a kiss? For most men, that is just not possible, but not with John Telewa, who has given himself the curios title of Kissing Bandit.

Telewa is on a self-assigned mission to kiss a million people of the opposite sex in order to make it into the Guinness World Records as the man who has kissed the most women in the world. The daring Kenyan has already kissed 675, according to the news portal AllAfrica.com.

“It all started off as a joke at a get-together with friends, when I kissed a girl and posted the pictures on Facebook,” says Telewa, recounting how the project began. “There were lots of reactions from people as to whether she was my girlfriend and I decided, since they are asking many questions, I should post another picture kissing another girl. Then I kept posting more pictures kissing more women.”

Before long, he began getting feedback “from as far as Europe, Australia, Asia and America,” he recalls. “This is where the idea of kissing the most women in the world came from.”

The 28-year-old graphic designer from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, has given himself three years to accomplish his goal to kiss a million.

“To reach his record-breaking goal, Telewa will kiss any willing woman. He has been known to approach ladies on the street, in supermarkets, at malls, anywhere. He explains his raison d'être to them and, if given the green light, puckers up,” reports All Africa.

Telewa only kisses females above age 16. He approaches any woman that catches his fancy wherever he sees one – even if the woman is with another man; in which case he would seek the woman’s approval and not bother to get the permission of the man with her before doing the kissing.

A cross-section of interviewed Nairobi residents reveals mixed reactions. While some women are happy to oblige in the hope that it would help Telewa to make history, others say it is unthinkable for them to allow themselves to be kissed in public by a stranger seeking fame.

On what motivates him, Telewa (shown in photo displaying his kissing skills on a willing lady) says he wants to become an ambassador of the international language of kissing.

He has the support of his family, according to his sister, Christabel Telewa. Hear her: “I’ve known my elder brother all my life. He is a super-extrovert who cares less about what other people think. There is nothing much that he is getting out of this. He is just being open-minded about breaking a record, that I am sure he will (break).”

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