Lamarre Street, between Bel-Air and Lalue; Nadia Vanginé Street!
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince
· 3 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
To Nadia Vanginé, gone too soon, and to Djenane Zéphyr, an unyielding witness of time!
— No Yves, please, don't do that, Djenane whispers… Give him a chance!
— But how do you know?
— I don't know. But I feel something happened behind the door. Then silence turns into a roar. An invisible clamor. A tear that rumbles at the corner of Borgella Street and Lamarre Street. Lamarre Street belongs to Bel-Air, but it stretches south like an obstinate vein. Yet, it seems we prefer to link it to Lalue, that urban sister it crosses to reach MUPANAH (1). Lamarre Street is not long. Fragile, stubborn, barely a kilometer and a few hundred meters from Borgella to Champ de Mars. But in this constricted breath of asphalt, it contains entire lives. For those who are forty or fifty today, it is not just a street: it is memory or a scent. It is one of the intimate pulsations of Port-au-Prince. The corner of Borgella and Lamarre forms a T-shape, a childhood seal etched in the dust. A whole world slumbers there: the Saint-Martial minor seminary, Dominique Savio, sanctuaries of schoolchildren whose laughter still echoes. There, Ramil. Year '76. I was five years old. First encounter, first spark, first gleam in the nascent night of life. Further on, the Banque de Paris became Promobank, then merged with the Customs. Today, Unibank overlays it like a recent layer, placed on the flaking strata of history. Finance has come to mingle these days like cracking paint. Lamarre Street is also Brother André's street. The Ciné Capitol, a profane temple where trembling images opened the world to our eager eyes. It is Mouzen courtyard, like the Prizon Fanm corridor, an interminable thousand-meter hallway, where promiscuity and solidarity intertwine like two enemy sisters. Lakou Mouzen! There, I scored my first goal, on a clumsy bicycle. The children's cries made the air tremble. Bewilderment turned into glory. There too, the name of Doctor Barthélémy, gynecologist and obstetrician, artisan of lives brought forth and deaths consented to, remains suspended, like a heavy, fragile memory above the street. Lamarre Street, so short yet so dense. The city's beating vein. It keeps the echoes of our voices, the fading laughter, the footsteps that still resonate between Bel-Air and Lalue. Every stone, every facade, is a library without walls. We think we are crossing a narrow passage, but it is time itself that we are crossing. Port-au-Prince is an intimate cartography, a book of thirst, flesh, and dust. I would have liked to see Lakou Mouzen again. Pouchon tells me that nothing has really changed, except the football field. It has disappeared, swallowed by makeshift houses. But the sound of the upper rooms remains, and the smell of the gutters persists, insistent, immutable. So I asked for news of Ti Nènè, Gina, and Frankel. The first two crossed the sea, the United States and Canada snatched them up. But Frankel… Frankel fell in front of the Archives office. He was going to get his extract for residency. He never came out. May he rest in peace. (1) National Pantheon Museum Yves Lafortune
Fort Lauderdale, September 30, 2025 Excerpt from « Inventory of my Territories »
To be published soon!
— But how do you know?
— I don't know. But I feel something happened behind the door. Then silence turns into a roar. An invisible clamor. A tear that rumbles at the corner of Borgella Street and Lamarre Street. Lamarre Street belongs to Bel-Air, but it stretches south like an obstinate vein. Yet, it seems we prefer to link it to Lalue, that urban sister it crosses to reach MUPANAH (1). Lamarre Street is not long. Fragile, stubborn, barely a kilometer and a few hundred meters from Borgella to Champ de Mars. But in this constricted breath of asphalt, it contains entire lives. For those who are forty or fifty today, it is not just a street: it is memory or a scent. It is one of the intimate pulsations of Port-au-Prince. The corner of Borgella and Lamarre forms a T-shape, a childhood seal etched in the dust. A whole world slumbers there: the Saint-Martial minor seminary, Dominique Savio, sanctuaries of schoolchildren whose laughter still echoes. There, Ramil. Year '76. I was five years old. First encounter, first spark, first gleam in the nascent night of life. Further on, the Banque de Paris became Promobank, then merged with the Customs. Today, Unibank overlays it like a recent layer, placed on the flaking strata of history. Finance has come to mingle these days like cracking paint. Lamarre Street is also Brother André's street. The Ciné Capitol, a profane temple where trembling images opened the world to our eager eyes. It is Mouzen courtyard, like the Prizon Fanm corridor, an interminable thousand-meter hallway, where promiscuity and solidarity intertwine like two enemy sisters. Lakou Mouzen! There, I scored my first goal, on a clumsy bicycle. The children's cries made the air tremble. Bewilderment turned into glory. There too, the name of Doctor Barthélémy, gynecologist and obstetrician, artisan of lives brought forth and deaths consented to, remains suspended, like a heavy, fragile memory above the street. Lamarre Street, so short yet so dense. The city's beating vein. It keeps the echoes of our voices, the fading laughter, the footsteps that still resonate between Bel-Air and Lalue. Every stone, every facade, is a library without walls. We think we are crossing a narrow passage, but it is time itself that we are crossing. Port-au-Prince is an intimate cartography, a book of thirst, flesh, and dust. I would have liked to see Lakou Mouzen again. Pouchon tells me that nothing has really changed, except the football field. It has disappeared, swallowed by makeshift houses. But the sound of the upper rooms remains, and the smell of the gutters persists, insistent, immutable. So I asked for news of Ti Nènè, Gina, and Frankel. The first two crossed the sea, the United States and Canada snatched them up. But Frankel… Frankel fell in front of the Archives office. He was going to get his extract for residency. He never came out. May he rest in peace. (1) National Pantheon Museum Yves Lafortune
Fort Lauderdale, September 30, 2025 Excerpt from « Inventory of my Territories »
To be published soon!
