Philippe Gustin

My name is Philippe Gustin. I spent my first twenty years in Belgium before leaving for the Democratic Republic of the Congo—then called Zaire—and later for Louisiana.

Arriving in Lafayette in August 1974, I was assigned to the office of CODOFIL (the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana), of which I would become director in 1979. In the meantime, I had the honor of meeting Antoine Humblet, then Belgium’s Minister of National Education. After the establishment of an educational mission in Louisiana—made possible by the arrival of many Belgian teachers from 1974 onward—he suggested that I create a twinning between the cities of Lafayette and Namur.

A few years later, around thirty Belgian municipalities followed this example and formed partnerships with towns in Louisiana, notably thanks to the support of a Belgian teacher from Durbuy, Philippe Jadot.

In the decades that followed, numerous exchanges, projects, and events took place, particularly between Lafayette and Namur, often initiated by Francis Laloux, alderman for culture and tourism of Greater Namur, and later by Luc Arnould and Frédéric Laloux, the first and second directors of the Namur–Europe–Wallonia agency, with whom I had the pleasure of collaborating on many exchanges and projects during my thirty years at the head of the International Center of Lafayette.

The mural you see today is a tribute to all those pioneers who helped build this bridge between Namur and Lafayette.