The summer is finally hitting its stride, and this week the community has a lot to feel proud about.

The Grenadiers came home to Cap-Haïtien after a World Cup run most of us didn’t think we’d see in our lifetimes (52 years is a long time to wait for anything).

We’ve also got a Roxbury dance studio doing something worth talking about, and a harder story underneath it all, one year since Marie Louissaint went missing, still no answers.

A week of pride and a week of the thing we don’t want to say out loud.

Let’s get into it.

Three of the men who carried our flag onto the world’s biggest stage came home to Cap-Haïtien this past weekend, and the city did not hold back.

Striker Duckens Nazon, defender Martin Expérience, and goalkeeper Josué Duverger landed at Cap-Haïtien International Airport on July 5, greeted by hundreds of fans waving flags, with rara bands and marching bands filling the terminal.

Cap-Haïtien Municipal Commission President Michel Saint-Croix and North Department Tourism Director Lumas Pierrot were among the officials who presented each player with a commemorative plaque marking Haiti’s return to the World Cup after 52 years.

This is a team built almost entirely from the diaspora — players raised or developed abroad, in France, in England, in MLS — that qualified without ever playing a single World Cup qualifier at home, because of the country’s security crisis.

The people who love this team most had to watch them qualify from a distance.

Sound familiar?

That’s the diaspora story, and it’s ours as much as it’s theirs.

The three were joined by Woodensky Pierre, the lone Haiti-based player on the roster, and MLS’s Danley Jean-Jacques.

Together, the four toured the Citadelle Laferrière and the beaches around Cap-Haïtien before continuing their nationwide tour.

“Qualifying for the World Cup remains one of the proudest moments of my career,” Nazon told local reporters.

We watched this run from Dedham and Mattapan and Brockton with the same knot in our throats.

The homecoming is theirs, but the pride is shared.

This week’s good news comes out of Roxbury.

JAE Dance Center partnered with EdVestors and the Bloomberg Arts Internship to give a group of Boston high schoolers a hands-on morning in Haitian folkloric dance and drumming.

Master drummers and company dancer Velouse walked the interns through the basics, and Jean led the group through a folkloric class combining drumming and movement, the kind of cultural transmission that doesn’t usually make it into a program description.

The Bloomberg Arts Internship places rising public high school seniors in paid summer roles at cultural organizations across nine cities this year, including Boston, alongside workforce-readiness training.

For a handful of those students, this summer included learning rhythms and steps rooted in Haitian tradition, taught by people from our own community.

JAE says more community programming is on the way.

We’ll keep watching this one.

It’s exactly the kind of local, specific story that never makes it onto a generic Haitian feed.

July 5 marked one year since Marie Louissaint, 70, went missing from her home at Caffrey Towers in Brockton.

A personal care assistant who checked in on her daily first noticed she was gone.

According to her family, she has wandered away from home before and speaks only Haitian Creole.

In the weeks after she disappeared, Brockton Police and State Police K-9 units searched the wooded areas near her building.

No new information has surfaced since.

Haitians of Boston, the community group that’s kept her story alive over the past year, says press coverage has largely moved on, but her family hasn’t, and neither should we.

If her name means something to you, or you know anything at all, call the Brockton Police Department at 508-941-0200.

We’ll say more when there’s more to say.

Your weekly map of what’s worth showing up for.

Saturday, July 18, 3–10 pm, Boston. Billed as the biggest Haitian cookout of the summer, with Trill Rika headlining Boston for the first time.

Friday, July 24, 10 pm–3 am. Royale Boston, 279 Tremont St, Boston. Kompa, Rabòday, Gouyad, and Haitian classics all night, with DJ MJ, DJ Super Duke, DJ Hendrixx, and DDK Era on the mix.

Comfort food with a twist, now a couple of taps away, Cinsationaldining is on Uber Eats and DoorDash, and they cater too. Keep an eye out for them at festivals and pop-ups around Boston this summer.

Qualifying for the World Cup remains one of the proudest moments of Nazon’s career after everything this team had to overcome just to get there without playing a single qualifier on home soil.

That’s us in a sentence, in a way.

If you know someone who watched the Grenadiers with pride and still isn’t getting Boston-specific news in their inbox, forward this to them.

SHARE SAK PASE BOSTON

Mèsi anpil. See you next Thursday.

GUSTAVE • FOUNDER, SAK PASE BOSTON

The California governor primary is live right now. So is the Texas Senate race, the 2028 presidential field, and the question of whether Taylor Swift releases a song for Toy Story 5.

Political and cultural markets on Kalshi move in real time — as news breaks, odds shift. Which means someone who reads closely, follows polls, and actually pays attention to what's happening has a genuine edge over someone who doesn't.

On Kalshi, information is the advantage. The platform is federally regulated under the CFTC, with no house edge and no restricted winners. Every dollar traded reflects real collective intelligence about what's going to happen.

If you're already following politics and culture closely, Kalshi turns that attention into an asset.

Sign up and start trading the events you're already watching.

Start trading now

_{Trade responsibly.}