It's the first of June and I still feel the hangover of the harvest festival that ended yesterday. This year celebration I feel that it's quite a bit special and different maybe because we didn't celebrate this for the last 2 years physically. Last year celebration were done fully online due to the physical distancing rule and the year before if I'm not mistaken the celebration were cancelled because of the peak cases of Covid-19. This year though, the physical celebration at the usual venue yearly happens to be very moderate with not so crowded people compare to the pre pandemic era. Since I've been quite active in blogging in Hive platform nowadays, the trip to visit the celebration event have become meaningful and I have more objectives to go there for documenting purposes.
The peak celebration of the Harvest festival that we the native called "Kaamatan" happen at the KDCA event ground located at district of Penampang. The finale of celebration happen on the 30th & 31st of May but people started to flock around this place as early as a week before this date because a lot of food stalls are already started their business. Around the KDCA compound, there's a dozen of traditional houses that represent the various ethnics that can be found here in Sabah. As the celebration has progress until today, I realize that there's a lot more new native ethnicity were found and discover that I myself have not known for so many years. They were hidden and quite isolated from the main city which contributed to their less exposure to the world. This celebration has helped to give them exposure to the public with the traditional beauty pageant that we called The Unduk Ngadau Kaamatan wearing their traditional custom during the competition. The existing native houses here I think should be upgraded and added to accomodate more o the native ethnicity.
Here's a few shoot that I managed to get during my visit on the first day of the finale. I came with a few friends to have a look around the vibe and the people there.
Tati Maya Hejnowski, the winner of Unduk Ngadau 2021 making her appearance in the Murut house. She's the one with the crown in the middle of the photo.
Miss Universe Malaysia 2020 making her appearance during this harvest festival.
This is the faces of the people that visiting the festival. It's quite refreshing actually to have this open air event where people can gather around and interact with each other after that long quarantine pandemic time. I'm just very grateful that it's not that super crowded just like the pre pandemic time which actually I'm not really a fan of. I really prefer this moderately crowd but yet very grand and full of smiles and joy. I will be back again with the second day of the finale on the next post. Cheers and thank you for visiting my blog.