The Local Celebrity

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.