IT’S NOT just for Cruise Ship tourists who come in big numbers. It’s also for locals and tourists flying in and come in small numbers like the family of five from Singapore. They visited the Sikaiana Cultural Village at Red Beach on Thursday last week; four days after the village hosted their first tourists from the Cruise Ship “Dawn Princess”. A big difference in terms of numbers but the reception was the same.
Local priest and tour escort, Fr Eric Tevaiola, greeted their Singaporean visitors upon their arrival and walked them through the cultural village explaining the various cultural activities on display in the main cultural house, the kitchen and the family house. At the cultural house they watched women busy weaving mats, hats, baskets, and fans while at the same time chanting old songs only a few can now sing.
[endif]In the kitchen the tourists watched local women actually cooking fish, bananas, cassava and cabbage on a red-hot stone oven (umu) which was later served to them in coconut woven baskets. They also visited a typical family dwelling house with local mats beautifully laid out. They even went down to the famous ‘Red Beach’ to watch a young local climb a coconut tree to collect toddy made from the sap of a young shoot.
here was a lot more to see but time was not on everybody’s side. There was however always time for the Sikaiana Cultural Village’s final act of an extravagant display of their cultural dances and chants; never mind there are only five of them. For this family came, they saw, they did not conquer but just enjoyed and experienced a culture that has survived the colonization of the past and the modernization of the present.
The Sikaiana Cultural Village is about 12 km east of Honiara and along the famous Red Beach on East Guadalcanal. The Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau (SIVB) has been working on developing cultural villages in and around Honiara since 2014. This is to meet the demands of visitors with an interest in our diverse cultures but cannot get to the islands because of distance and other reasons. The Sikaiana/Polynesian Cultural Village at Red Beach is one of these and was funded by both the SIVB and the Sikaiana settlers on Red Beach.
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