gawai/kaamatan festival in church

although the gawai and kaamataan (harvest festival of the ethnic groups in sabah and sarawak) were sometime ago (somewhere end of may), our church just recenlty celebrated the feast.

due to the st anne’s feast, quite a number of sabahaan/sarawkians were in penang, thus they were invited by the bahasa group in our church to celebrate the feast. the mass was in both english and bahasa and after mass, there was a cultural show and buffet lunch.

i was very fascinated by the costumes of those ethnic groups like kadazan, iban and bidayuh. very colourful, very elaborately done with threads or beads all over. some costumes have small bells hanging. many people were fascinated by their costumes too, so much so that many of them request the girls to pose for photos outside the church (when mass ended). i took the opportunity to snap some pictures of course and would like to share the pictures here. they were too busy posing for so many photographers i have no time to find out from them which costumes represents which groups. anyone of you know?