19 Jun 2014

Excitement builds for Melanesian Festival in PNG

8:10 pm on 19 June 2014

Excitement is building in Papua New Guinea, as the country prepares to host the 5th Melanesian Festival of Arts and Culture.

The festival begins on June 28th in Port Moresby and will run for two weeks.

The overall co-ordinator of the festival's events, Mali Voi, says about 250 people have volunteered to help and large numbers of people from the provinces are expected to flood in.

Mr Voi says they've tried to be inclusive of as many people as possible, and because PNG has so much cultural diversity, they've extended the festival to outside of Port Moresby.

"We just can't cope with the demand, we want to come, we want to come, we want to come. We don't want to dominate anyting, with other Melanesians coming. So, what we've done is put four regions to which they will go to, to regionally participate up that way, so they don't crowd Port Moresby here."

Mali Voi says the destinations from the four regions are Alotau, Kokopo, Wewak and Mt Hagen.