The inaugural Toea Arm Shell Festival to be held on Mailu Island have had the dates put back to coincide with the availability of key leaders who will be present.
The Festival was initially set for November 30 to December 1, but had to be rescheduled to Dec 16-17. However, the dates have been further moved to Dec 27 and 28.
Chairman of the Festival, Leonard Ba’a said the deferral of the dates was due to “circumstances beyond our control,” as he put it.
He added that key ministers including local MP Sir Puka Tema, Tourism Minister Tobias Kulang and Central Province Governor Kila Haoda have confirmed their attendance to the Festival.
Chairman Ba’a said the Toea Arm Shell was used as the traditional money in the early historical Kula Trade voyages along the Eastern Papuan coastline.
He said the Festival was purposely to revive and promote the historical cultural significance of the Toea Arm shell during the Kula Trade and the cultural traditions and identities of the Amazon Bay LLG and Abau District.
Ba’a who is a former schools administrator said the PNG Currency was Kina and Toea of which the Toea represented the Papuan region, while Kina represented the New Guinea region.
“ The Toea Arm shell is used as a very special shell for pride price and also with this shell you will be able to exchange very valuable items such as pigs for feasts and for other activities.”
He said this shell was usually taken from the Kula trade and use to buy pigs and women along the Aroma coast in Abau District.
“The Motuans highly value this shell in their traditional society and in most cases any person who possess many of these armshells is regarded to be very rich and a powerful man- normally a chief is often regarded in this calibre.”
This inaugural Toea Arm shell festival will help to create a new Tourism product, and more importantly it will help bring in different forms of development related to tourism development into the area.