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voyaging and hard work over the past few years that we found it hard to pull out to explore future. Instead we completed plans to fly in various directions, to meet family in New Zealand, to visit our son in L.A. and our daughter in the U.S. These visits were much overdue. But while we were making these arrangements the Pesta Kamaatan rice harvest festival was in full swing in Sabah.
This is a festival celebrated by the indigenous people of Sabah, rather than the purely Malay, mostly Moslem people. It has its origins in a myth and the girls who parade in the Beauty Pageant are being judged by less than conventional standards. Rather than beauty alone they must be suitable to act as stand-in for a goddess! This goddess in ancient times sacrificed her life so that mankind might have food, and in particular, RICE!
Every township had its own contests and in company with another wonderful friend, Robert Bashee, a man with political connections and Kadazan blood, we attended several of these functions. There were few foreign faces and were occassionally afforded the courtesy of
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