It was 31 May. We were covering the few kilometres’ distance between the kampung and the big KDCA headquarters on the road to the city, riding the old Toyota with the windows open, feeling the excitement that grew all around us, for that was the great day, the climax of the whole month, possibly of my whole period of fieldwork. My host and guide, Jaunis, was keen to show me the great display of the Kadazan culture, its dressing itself for the special day, its hospitality at its excessive best. I was full of expectations for all that and eager to show a visiting Japanese friend the best of my adoptive culture, the thing I had been preparing myself for during the past few months, whose build-up I had been able to breathe day by day in the village and everywhere else, even in the supermarkets displaying replicas of stalks of padi, baskets filled with agricultural bounties or smiling faces of women in black dresses and wearing conical rattan hats. The street was full of cars heading in the same direction as us, so, after passing Donggonggon, with its tamu grounds, its van drivers sitting in small groups and its coffee shops, Jaunis took a turn off the main road onto a secondary one. The street went through the kampung of Peter Mojuntin, the hero of the early Kadazan nationalism, the ‘golden son of Penampang’, tragically killed in the plane crash of 1976, where his family house still stands, then all the way through what used to be a series of Kadazan villages now engulfed by the urban sprawl to reach the last of them, Koidupan, where we parked the car just behind the net which fenced the compound of the KDCA. Once inside, past the big gates, we found ourselves in the middle of a huge crowd of women, men and children, dressed in all colours and fashions, many wearing the black Kadazandusun traditional dress, all walking from one side to another, stopping here and there to be taken in a vortex of music, dancing, eating and drinking. The whole open space within the fences was filled up with stalls selling food and drinks, handicrafts, books or music, stands set up by the sponsor, Nestlé, to promote its products, and various stages where different groups performed ethnic dances or music. The most animated area was towards the front, where members of each Kadazandusun group gathered in the replica of their traditional house and danced, played music, drank, chatted and entertained long-time friends as well as occasional visitors.