Olga Fontanellaz travels to the little-known Reeds Festival in Papua New Guinea’s Autonomous Region of Bougainville.

Dancers swaying their hips to the rhythms of island music. Credit: Olga Fontanellaz

‘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.

‘Tourists don’t know how beautiful Bougainville is.’

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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.

Discovering Bougainville

At Buka airport, the moist Bougainvillean heat engulfs us. Melanesian mothers with rainbow-coloured 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.

‘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.’

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.’

‘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.

Joining the crowds at the festival

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.

This article first published in the May–June issue of Paradise, the inflight magazine of Air Niugini. Reproduced with permission.