Celebrating Father’s Day in Cuba

By Nike

HAVANA TIMES – This Sunday, June 20, we celebrate Father’s Day in my country. It is a day that is not usually given as much importance as that of Mother’s Day, but this one was different.

The father is a very important and essential figure in the education of children, that is why I am happy that people celebrate it and have parties. Today there are many families gathered and from the house of my closest neighbors I hear music.

In the morning I woke up to the cry of “chicken arrived at the butcher shop” that someone shouted from the street. Before the echo of that person faded in my ears someone else asked shouting “if there was a line?” The truth is that those screams worked as an alarm, and I could no longer sleep.

I think that the arrival of the chicken at the butcher shop on Father’s Day, although many are grateful for it, is a bit cruel. For it forces the father to jump into a line from which he knows what time it starts but not when it ends. But everyone wants chicken for lunch.

At the present time, there is not even a beer to offer a toast for the father of the family, although many ventured out to find a line where it was sold during the week. I learned, there was even blood spilt over it in different parts of Havana.

That is why I admire those who, even in these days of frightening scarcity, are celebrating the day. Like my next-door neighbors who do it with music and even dancing to the rhythm of the Van Van.

I hope and wish that next year our fathers have the day they deserve with their beers, and their piece of suckling pig.

Congratulations to all Cuban fathers.

Read more from Nike’s diary here.