Francis Laloux

I am Francis Laloux, Alderman for Tourism of the City of Namur in 1977, at the time of the municipal merger. At the request of the mayor, Louis Namêche, I formalized the twinning agreement between the City of Namur and the City of Lafayette in 1979.

I had the pleasure of traveling to Lafayette many times with residents of Namur and of welcoming hundreds of people from Lafayette to Namur, with the help of the tour operator Armand Burnonville and the support of my friend Jules Hendrick, then a member of the Provincial Executive of the Province of Namur.

The mayors of Lafayette, Kenny Bowen and Dud Lastrapes, further developed this twinning with the assistance of their assistant Bertha Bernard and Philippe Gustin, then director of CODOFIL, who was a key driving force behind relations between the two communities.

Numerous cultural exchanges took place, and with the arrival of Luc Arnould at head of the international relations department of the City of Namur, the economic and academic aspects developed significantly within the Sésame network, now known as the Vertech network.

The French language remains the strong bond in this relationship, and teachers from the Wallonia-Brussels area continue to be worthy ambassadors of the initiative established by Mariette Delahaut at the request of Minister Antoine Humblet.

The Namur–Lafayette association remains very active and continues to foster human connections between our two communities. This mural provides the missing visibility, allowing the people of Namur and others to appreciate the richness of this twinning.