Chichiguas

Day 50

Should have a been a celebratory day considering is day 50, but well, I guess I'll leave the milestone celebration when I reach day 182 or day 183.  What I can say though is that it has been quite the pleasure to relieve some moments through writing and also a bit cathartic to say the least, not without some challenges though the main one being writing on time and sticking to a schedule for it.

Other challenge is that sometimes I'm not inspired or have anything meaningful to write about at any given moment, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.  This past weekend was a bit more moved than usual in between working out, beach, art festivals, videogames, party and meeting up with friends and family, but one thing in particular brought some nice memories.

You see, the beach day was not really a beach day, I was more of a kite day at the beach, not me flying kites, but me attending a kite festival.  Checking all the kites around reminded me of simpler times when the main concern for me and my brothers was to build a kite and compete with others in the neighborhood on who built it better and of course, who flew it higher.

In Santo Domingo, living in "los kilómetros" (the kilometers) do have its perks, and one of them was that we had the Parque Mirador Sur (roughly translated as South Vantagepoint Park) and our "backyard" and it is a fairly extensive park mainly for recreation and other healthy type of activities,  some would compare it to Central Park in NYC which such comparison is a bit (a LOT) of a stretch, but that said, is indeed the easier comparison.

Having the mirador so close, and having the passion to build kites, was a match made in heaven, because it was the perfect spot to fly kites with the safety from cars, trees, and rooftops.  I remember clearly going around with my brothers to buy the materials and competing with others on which one was the nicest one, and just to end the day we all would go to the mirador to fly them out.

That said, not everything was perfect with the mirador.  One of my earliest memories of vandalism and "bad people" was actually there, and without going into too much detail at the moment, that's where I witness a robbery for the first time, but again, details on that particular day will be shared on a later day for now, just positives.

As time went on, building kites became less and less of a thing, and I we all just fell out of love with it.  Maybe because my brothers got older and got better things to do, maybe because it became less popuplar, maybe because buying plastic ones was easier, I don't know.  One thing that I do know is that it kind of became a thing of like a child play for the ones in the poorest barrios, and it has been ages since I've seen anyone dealing with kite building.

I even asked my friends back home if this was still a thing.  

Below a picture of the kite festival in Miami Beach, Florida.  This has been a yearly event for many years already, it was nice to see all kites flying together, but one thing I didnt not like was the fact that 100% of the kites in the sky were industrialized/manufactured ones. Hand-made ones, like the one I used to have in DR, were nowhere to be seeing, and it really sucked.

Note: Chichigua is kite.  This how they are called in the Dominican Republic, but in other spanish-speaking countries are known as "Cometa" or "Papalote".

Miami Beach Kite Festival 2023