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Lambete station at Munda, Western Province was packed as hundreds turned up to witness the Roviana lagoon festival which opened in unique and colourful traditional style yesterday.
The opening ceremony saw a float involving rafts from four communities in the Roviana Lagoon, showcasing the unique Roviana culture as they made their way to the shores of Lambete Station.
A Tomoko (traditional war canoe) said to be the first ever to be originally built with six different tree species, graced this year’s festival shores with Deputy Premier, Malloney Lopoto on board to officially open the event.
The annual festival now in its seventh year initially began in 2009 as the Aleck Wickham Crawl, says festival Coordinator and National Fisheries Development (NFD) Noro based Community Affairs Manager, Nelson Boso.
Mr Boso told this paper in an interview that this year’s festival will feature other sets of cultural demonstration and traditional practices that are rarely used nowadays.
“Although we will still have the traditional Aleck Wickham crawl, for this year we are looking at producing cultural demonstrations and traditional practices that we rarely used nowadays.
“We want to go back and re-look into them and if possible will start using them, nowadays we forget how to weave coconut baskets, we often use plastics or empty bag rice which took decades to rot.
“That is one component of cultural demonstration, the other is how to relook and recreate our traditional money, the Bakiha and also some of the traditional arm band made of very fine pandanus.
“Traditional bow and arrows, spears, flutes and how to prepare traditional food from nuts,” Mr Boso said.
These will be the line-up of activities for this week before the festival ends on Friday.
Compared to previous year’s festival, Mr Boso said these would be the activities that would stand out. He adds that next year they will go on to other aspects of cultural significance in Roviana.
“We have an underlying theme, ““celebration and promoting people’s culture and environment in Roviana Lagoon.
“The festival’s aim is to create and maintain a festival, to carry out our vision and to attract tourists, especially to Roviana Lagoon,” he said.
NFD General Manager, Frank Wickham delivering his remarks
(Source: The Island Sun 14 December 2016)
A Tomoko (traditional war canoe) said to be the first ever to be originally built with six different tree species, graced this year’s festival shores with Deputy Premier, Malloney Lopoto on board to officially open the event.
The annual festival now in its seventh year initially began in 2009 as the Aleck Wickham Crawl, says festival Coordinator and National Fisheries Development (NFD) Noro based Community Affairs Manager, Nelson Boso.
Mr Boso told this paper in an interview that this year’s festival will feature other sets of cultural demonstration and traditional practices that are rarely used nowadays.
“Although we will still have the traditional Aleck Wickham crawl, for this year we are looking at producing cultural demonstrations and traditional practices that we rarely used nowadays.
“We want to go back and re-look into them and if possible will start using them, nowadays we forget how to weave coconut baskets, we often use plastics or empty bag rice which took decades to rot.
“That is one component of cultural demonstration, the other is how to relook and recreate our traditional money, the Bakiha and also some of the traditional arm band made of very fine pandanus.
“Traditional bow and arrows, spears, flutes and how to prepare traditional food from nuts,” Mr Boso said.
These will be the line-up of activities for this week before the festival ends on Friday.
Compared to previous year’s festival, Mr Boso said these would be the activities that would stand out. He adds that next year they will go on to other aspects of cultural significance in Roviana.
“We have an underlying theme, ““celebration and promoting people’s culture and environment in Roviana Lagoon.
“The festival’s aim is to create and maintain a festival, to carry out our vision and to attract tourists, especially to Roviana Lagoon,” he said.
NFD General Manager, Frank Wickham delivering his remarks
(Source: The Island Sun 14 December 2016)
