Christopher Wong

It's 2am, and I was still wearing my sombrero (straw hat), not for the moon of course, but for the fallen sparkles.

 

Parranda is a very unique style of celebration in small towns of Cuba, and no Parranda will finish without shooting tens of thousands of fireworks and rockets into the sky, by hand, though some flew into the crowd, some came back down before explosion. No fence, no crowd control.

 

It's New Year's Eve in Zulueta, public speakers playfully played the siren of air strike warning, and a man behind the microphone was cheering. Rockets were shot from hands everywhere around me, bombs like the size of a grapefruit were taken to the make shift tubes, one fired up, another in. Unlike many Cubans who were fearless and in ecstatic, I put on my ear plugs and sombrero, cautious as if I was in a battlefield.

 

We all know Cuba is a country lack of resources, but this has nothing to do with that, and I don't think any technology can replace the thrill of igniting sparkles and explosions with a Cuban cigar.