Fifty-two years of waiting ended forty minutes ago down the road from your house.

Les Grenadiers walked onto the field at Gillette, and Mattapan Square answered with chants you could hear from a block away. (We’ve covered a lot of weeks in this Square. This one was different.)

This week: the morning-after scene in Mattapan, a Haitian chef bringing fried patties to a Cambridge festival you can actually attend, and the match that’s about to test everyone’s nerves, Haiti versus Brazil.

Let’s get into it.

On June 13, Haiti played a World Cup match at Gillette Stadium.

Read that again.

Not on a screen from another continent but in Foxborough, against Scotland, in front of a stadium full of people who drove in from Mattapan, Brockton, and Randolph.

The morning before the game, Mattapan Square filled up.

Dozens of fans waving the flag, chants of “Grenadye Alaso!” cutting through the heat, and a group breaking into song before boarding the bus south.

Governor Maura Healey had secured 1,100 World Cup tickets for Massachusetts residents, and roughly 100 of them went to Haitians through a Mattapan nonprofit.

To Emalee Milcet, one of the recipients, getting to be in the World Cup this year, playing in Boston, where there’s so much Haitian diversity meant everything.

She said it was amazing, and you understood exactly what she meant.

In Foxborough, Charlot Lucien gathered about 30 fans at his home to march to the stadium in Grenadye fashion.

A pastor prayed for victory.

Then everyone ate rice, beans, shrimp, chicken, and fresh juices, and even the Scottish fans were welcomed to the table to taste the rum.

Scotland won, 1-0, on a first-half goal.

The score isn’t the part that matters.

This was the team’s first World Cup appearance since 1974, and it happened in our backyard.

Some of your neighbors were in those stands.

Maritza Jules is 29.

Before she was feeding people in Cambridge, she was studying computer science in Haiti until her family had to leave.

They fled gang violence and arrived legally in Greater Boston in 2023.

She worked at a Home Depot helping contractors, then for the City of Somerville helping immigrants navigate their new lives.

Now she’s a teacher’s assistant at a nonprofit serving young Haitians here and back home.

She also runs a catering business with her mother.

This Saturday, June 20, she’ll be one of eight chefs at the second Cambridge Refugee Food Festival in Central Square, noon to 3 pm.

She’s making fried Haitian patties stuffed with chicken, served with Scotch bonnet pikliz.

Chefs from Somalia, Cuba, Jordan, Morocco, Uganda, Venezuela, and Ukraine cook alongside her, with music, dance, and art filling out the afternoon.

For her, cooking is how she tells the world we exist.

“We may have problems in our countries, but we’re strong enough to bring something into this country.”

This is the kind of afternoon you and your partner can walk straight into, and walk out of having eaten something that tastes like home.

The Refugee Supper Club is the year-round version of Saturday’s festival.

Once a month, a refugee chef cooks dinner in a Cambridge home for a table of strangers, shares their story, and teaches one course hands-on.

Tickets run $99 per person, and the club pays its chefs a real honorarium in money, not exposure.

The two cofounders adapted the idea from France’s Refugee Food Festival, run out of Pagu, the Cambridge restaurant that earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand last year.

One past host explained there are fewer and fewer places left where you can actually meet people you’d otherwise never cross paths with.

If Saturday’s patties leave you wanting more, this is where you book the full table.

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

Dom the Composer is a Haitian-American singer-songwriter who got his start in the All Saints Choir of Men & Boys in Ashmont. He’s at the Lizard Lounge this Thursday with Prophet PM and LIZ’s Kid—$ 15 at the door, 8 pm, ages 21+.

The Haitian Artists Assembly of Massachusetts is marking 30 years of Haitian art in Greater Boston with a panel discussion, a gallery exhibition, a book signing, and a reception featuring traditional Haitian food. One of the panelists is Charlot Lucien, the same man who led 30 fans on a march to Gillette Stadium last Saturday.

The match everyone in your circle is already texting about gets a full party around it at Reunion BBQ in the South End. Get tickets in advance; this one won’t have room to spare.

Don’t forget what Maritza Jules said: that her food carries the part of her soul she left back home.

After a week when the whole community drove to Foxborough to watch our flag walk onto a World Cup field, that’s the thing I hold on to.

We’ve got Brazil ahead, patties on Saturday, and a lot to talk about.

If you know someone who should be reading this — a cousin, a coworker, the friend who still gets only generic Haitian content — forward it their way.

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Mèsi anpil.

See you next Thursday.

GUSTAVE • FOUNDER, SAK PASE BOSTON