The colorful Kutubu Kundu and Digaso festival celebrated its 7th year in September, this time hosting its highest number of tourist visitors to the festival in Daga Village, Pimaga.

Tourists and traditional dancers posing for a photograph at the show ground.

The folks from Kutubu, Moran, Huli and Bosavi certainly did not let the visitors down. The different singing groups braved the heat to put their spectacular traditional dances sending the tourists right into the grounds to capture every moment of it with their cameras.

The festival has been supported by MRDC since its inception in 2011 by contributing K350,000 in the last 7 years, K50,000 for each year.

This year’s sponsorship announcement was made at the Holiday Inn Hotel in August in Port Moresby during the Festival’s first ever fundraising dinner event.

MRDC’s Imbi Tagune, in presenting the cheque said the aim of supporting such an event for this long is because the company sees the potential of the festival in attaching many tourists both domestically and internationally..

“We are building a 5-star hotel in Port Moresby, the Hilton Hotel, we want to bring in tourists from around the world and create an avenue for them to experience our wonderful country by travelling out to the remote areas such as Kutubu to see our diverse and unique cultures in festivals like this”.

We have PNG Air that’s flying in up to three times a week, so tourists staying at the Hilton can fly up, see the festival and go back”, said Tagune.

Festival committee president Saina Jeffery during the festival thanked MRDC for believing in the festival and its aim in preserving the Kutubu culture, environment and wildlife.

She said MRDC has been a supporter since day one of the festival and the company’s support was very helpful in keeping the festival going every year since then.

The festival committee also welcomed the PNG Tourism Promotion Authority who sponsored the event and brought in the tourists. Their presence was a promising sign of the event being a recognized cultural event in the country.

A new addition to the festivities was the inclusion of a traditional canoe race on the Lake Kutubu on the Sunday after the two-day festival. The villages around the lake raced each other attired in traditional wear which also wowed the tourists who were accommodated at the Tubo lodge. The canoe race organized by the committee together with locals and seeks to be a popular in the years to come.

A dancing group in their traditional attaires at the show ground.