Eight days a month, four times a day, there is a small
parade on the only paved street that travels through a remote town in Borneo.
The town usually only likes to show up for two of the four parade time slots
(the 4:45am and the 6:15 pm time slots aren’t that common), so at approximately
10:30am and 3:45pm, the residents of this small town gather on porches, as they
anxiously wait for the parade to
begin. You may ask why in a town with
fewer than 30 families there is such a regular parade, and what does that
parade consist of. Well, the answer is
the local celebrity, also known as me.
To me the parade doesn’t seem very exciting, as it consists of me
walking back and forth from my house to the bridge where I dock my boat. However, to the local town children, they
still view this as the highlight of their day.
The children will often run out of the houses or stop their game to say
hello and wave to me. I hear many shouts
of greetings, “Hello Mister” (they haven’t figured out that the expression is
only used for men), “Hello bule” (bule is the general term used for Westerns
but actually means albino), and sometimes if I am really lucky, I even get a “Hello
Katie”. Usually, I will do my princess
parade wave “wrist wrist elbow elbow”, as I stomp down the street in my rubber
boats and camo pants. Recently though,
the parade has become interactive, with the children finally being brave enough
to run to the road and give me a high five. I keep waiting for the novelty of
me to wear off (how long does 15 minutes of fame really last), but 16 months
later, I still hold the position as the local celebrity.
