Bamboo pipes and swaying grass skirts
Bougainville’s Reeds Festival
“Never heard of it.” “Why Bougainville?” “Why don’t you go to Mount Hagen Festival?” They were some of the comments from my local friends about my plan to go to the Reeds Festival in Bougainville. In Papua New Guinea, when you talk about the festivals, everyone thinks of the Highlands, Mount Hagen and Goroka, and to some extent Rabaul and the Sepik. But the Reeds Festival, what kind of festival is it? What’s it like? I wanted to find out. I heard the festival was held on Bougainville Island beginning in July, just enough information last year to board the plane in Port Moresby with my husband. Bougainville Island is as far east as you can go in PNG. Together with Buka Island and countless small islands and atolls, it’s part of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. No roads lead to or from it, you get there by plane or by boat. One-and-a-half-hours later, our descent to Bougainville reveals views over blue water dotted with islands, lush jungle and mountain ridges. French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville discovered this volcanic island about 250 years ago and named it after himself. At Buka airport, the moist Bougainvillean heat engulfs us. Melanesian mothers with rainbowcoloured umbrellas wave and smile at us. Old women sitting on the ground quietly weave bilums, PNG traditional string bags. Noisy children are running around, climbing betel nut trees and causing trouble.
From Buka, the provincial capital, a short banana boat ride takes us across Buka Passage – the channel separating Bougainville and Buka islands – to Kokopau. From here, it’s a four-hour drive south by public motor vehicle (PMV) to Arawa, where the festival is taking place.
PMVs in Bougainville are four-wheel-drive Toyota LandCruisers. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they seem to have no limit to how many people can fit inside.
Having different names like ‘Transformer’, ‘Yumi Yet Rong’, ‘Crazy Rider’, ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Rollercoaster’, the PMVs all promise an unforgettable ride.
Of course, we go on ‘Mad Max’. With the Bougainvillean flag flapping about by the windscreen and a figurine of the Virgin Mary violently bouncing on the dashboard, Steven, our PMV driver, fulfils the promise with a combination of flashing signals and horn honking.
“We are rich. You know how much copper and gold we have?” Steven says, making reference to Panguna mine. “And copra and cocoa too.”
The Reeds Festival was initiated a few years ago to showcase and preserve the cultural traditions of the people of Bougainville. But very few tourists have journeyed to the island to see it.
“Do you like swimming? Snorkelling? All tourists like snorkelling,” he says as he points to sugar-white beaches and clear turquoise waters. At the risk of disappointing him, I tell him that we have come for the Reeds Festival. Does he know if it’s on? “Yeaap,” he says with some hesitation.
Our frenzied drive works out all right, and we race with all our limbs attached into Arawa.
Regardless of potholes the size of bathtubs, I have to admit the drive is scenic, too, with white sandy beaches fringed by coconut palms, lush jungle and plantations of banana and cocoa palm.
We are hosted by a couple working for the Volunteer Service Abroad, who tell us: “Tourists don’t know how beautiful Bougainville is.”
In the morning, we join the crowds at the Reeds Festival, where bamboo pipes, sing-sings, cultural performances dramatising local legends, live bands playing contemporary Bougainville music and art and craft displays are part of the program.
We are soon tapping our feet to the rhythm of the bamboo pipes. Made from a combination of different sizes of mambu (bamboo), the pipes are unique to Bougainville.
The beat of the pipes echoes in the air, resonating through my whole body. With the first sounds of the music, Bougainvillean women with broad charming smiles and long grass skirts come forward, swaying their hips and graciously moving their heads to the island tune.
The women’s hypnotising performance is followed by men’s warrior dances, which are traditionally performed to welcome chiefs from other tribes, or at the start or end of a war.
Other performing groups from all over Bougainville soon join the warrior dancers.
Ignoring the energy-sapping heat, they sing traditional songs about their daily lives – fishing, canoeing and gardening.
Gone are those days when people here wore grass skirts. Western-style clothes have been eagerly adopted. But for special occasions, such as the Reeds Festival, traditional attire is taken out from the old suitcases.
All the performers are dressed in grass skirts – men and women – and they are decorated with necklaces, belts, armbands and hairbands.
There is no vivid body paint, or towering headdresses loved and treasured by the Highlanders. There are no boar tusks or cassowary quills pierced through the noses, but necklaces and hairbands made of dried seeds and shells. The costumes aren’t extravagant and eye-catching. Their beauty comes from their simplicity and the use of natural materials.
Bilums are part of the dress too. In Bougainville they are still made using woven plant reeds and natural dyes, not the flamboyant synthetic yarns popular elsewhere.
I have to remind myself I am in PNG because the costumes look so similar to those worn in the Solomon Islands. At this point, the sun is blazing relentlessly. It is hot, humid and airless. Despite the heat, a group of men blow into a row of vibrating panpipes, traditionally used for ceremonial and ritual occasions. Typical to Bougainville, their close neighbours, the Solomon Islanders, also know how to blow these pipes. Consisting of several pipes of gradually increasing length, they are made of bamboo or local reeds, giving the festival its name.
To the right, there is another group of men. They have bows and arrows, and piercing eyes. My husband can’t take his eyes off them, captivated by their mock battles and warrior-like cries.
With 23 languages spoken in Bougainville, the culture varies from area to area, but everyone seems to agree about the need to “save our God-given culture”.
The Reeds Festival was initiated a few years ago to showcase and preserve the cultural traditions of the people of Bougainville. Support from sponsors has made it a regular event, but so far very few tourists have journeyed to the island to see it.
When I return to Port Moresby, sunburnt and holding a woven basket full of kaukau, the questions change from ‘why Bougainville?’ to ‘what was it like’?
I tell my local friends that the beauty of the island isn’t only in white sandy beaches and blue waters teeming with fish, but in its warmhearted and resilient people who have rebuilt their lives and revived their culture since the 1988–1998 civil conflict.