Your host: Maggie Wilson is your ideal host.
With her mix of village upbringing and education in Queensland, Australia, Maggie has a deep knowledge of the local history and customs along with an understanding of the needs of visitors from overseas.

Situated 9 kms out of Mt Hagen by Kunguma Village on the historic Kuta Ridge. The Lodge and the rooms offer the charm of Papua New Guinea with modern conveniences.

A temperate climate all year around. Our high altitude means comfortable temperatures, low humidity, sunny days, cool evenings and few insects.... all year around.

Papua New Guinea is on the eastern half of the island New Guinea situated to the north of Australia.

Mt Hagen is in the highlands of PNG, virtually in the center of the country.

Travel insurance: This is a must for travellers to Papua New Guinea, especially provisions for medical evacuation to Australia in case of serious accident or illness.

The Elti Penambi.

Perhaps you'd like to know more about your hosts in Mt Hagen.
Haus Poroman in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea is built on the tribal land of the Penambi Wia people of Kunguma village, an Elti Penambi sub-clan.

In the past our people were to be feared. Our ancestors were great warriors. The Elti Penambi were notorious for one reason or another, but we were defeated in the great battle of tribal warfare of the 1920's. It was when the Elti Penambi picked a fight with the Moki's, our closest neighbours, that brought about the downfall of our great power of fighters.

My father rembers this clearly, he says, "this happend when some men went to watch a tribal fight between the Jigas and the Mokis, and one of the Elti men was killed accidently". It was at his funeral that one of the Moki men was spitting at something and everybody started to whisper how dare he do this?

Perhaps he was happy that one of our Elti Penambi men was killed. More and more were saying how disrespectful to spit and he should not get away with such behavior. Others said maybe he did not mean to do this and so on.
Suddenly one of our Elti men went and killed a Moki man. This clan was our only friends at the time, so all the tribes surrounding the Elti Penambi decided to gang up on our people.
My father was a teenager at the time and he had four younger brothers and the youngest of them only four years old. Both my grandparents were killed during this war. My father and his brothers were taken by a far away tribe called the Melikas, who raised them and married them to their daughters and sent them back to Kunguma in the 1930's. Others are scattered all over the valley, although we have come together on special occasions.

Today the Elti Penambi clan keeps up with the rest of Papua New Guinea and are keeping up with the times, be it modern or traditional. A few of our people are successful professionals and other negotiate tribal affairs.

That is the reason why we are different.