traveller Bamboo pipes and swaying grass skirts
“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.
Stagecraft … performers at the Reeds Festival (above); men and young boys painted for the festival with natural pigments (right); men playing pan flutes consisting of several pipes of gradually increasing length (far right).
36 Paradise – Air Niugini’s in-flight magazine
OUR country
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.