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front row seats along with the dignitaries.
The finale moved from the sports fields and longhouses of 32 provinces to Kota Kinabalu. Dignitaries even from as far as Kuala Lumpur on the mainland arrived with pomp to greet community leaders and the local priests and priestesses. It was really a big affair that we felt very privileged to be included. The line-up of faces was utterly fascinating. During a break in the program we wandered around a "village" which contained representations of each of the different ethnic houses, along with samples of their food and rice wine drink. In one house visitors leapt up and down on a cantilevered sprung bamboo floor----a permanent installation just like a trampoline.
After the festival the indigenous people, who are mostly poor rice farmers put away their treasured clothes and return ed to work the land. The government is working hard to give them a better education, and policies now include more flexibility towards their culture ----as there seems to be for all the different cultures of Western Malaysia at this time.
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