Portrait of an elderly woman with short white hair, smiling, wearing a black blazer and pearl necklace against a dark backdrop.

Stella Chase – Continuing the Legacy of Dooky Chase

Some legacies are built in boardrooms. Others are built in kitchens. The legacy of the Chase family was built in both seasoned with faith, stirred with sacrifice, and served with an open door to anyone who walked through it. For over eight decades, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant on Orleans Avenue has stood not merely as a place to eat, but as proof that one family’s refusal to be diminished could nourish an entire city’s soul. Stella Chase did not set out to be a keeper of that flame. She was a teacher who had built her own life away from the hum of the kitchen. But legacy has a way of calling you home. When she returned to take her place beside her parents, she brought with her something the restaurant had always run on: quiet strength, deep faith, and an unwavering belief that food, at its highest purpose, is an act of love. Today, with five generations working side by side and two major national honors to their name, the story of Dooky Chase’s is no longer just a New Orleans story. It belongs to the world. And at the center of it all stands Stella Chase, steady, gracious, and absolutely certain that the best is still to come.
Diplomacy

Diplomacy and the Power of Connection

From embassy receptions and cultural celebrations to international partnerships and personal introductions, International Kreol Magazine continues to build bridges across countries, institutions and communities.
Aerial view of a deep circular blue lagoon surrounded by turquoise shallow water and coral reefs.

Belize Kriol – The Voice of a Nation

Every language tells a story, but some languages carry the heartbeat of a people. Belize Kriol is one of them. It is far more than a means of communication. It is a living expression of history, resilience, identity, and belonging. Born from the meeting of African heritage, British colonial influence, and the unique experiences of the people of Belize, Kriol grew not in classrooms or government halls, but in homes, marketplaces, logging camps, fishing villages, and communities determined to survive and thrive.
Aerial view of a palm-lined isthmus with houses, separating deep blue ocean on the left from a turquoise lagoon on the right.

Tuvalu – The World’s Smallest Paradise, Still Timeless

Somewhere between Hawaii and Australia, where the Pacific stretches so wide it seems to forget the rest of the world exists, nine slivers of coral rise barely above the waterline. This is Tuvalu, a nation so slender in places that a person standing at its centre can watch the ocean break on one side and the lagoon lie still as glass on the other, all within the same unhurried glance. There are no towering resorts here, no beach bars competing for attention, no queues forming for the next attraction. What Tuvalu offers instead is something increasingly rare in modern travel, an honest and unpolished window into Pacific island life, lived exactly as it has been for generations.
Boathouse on stilts in a calm lake with a shoreline community across the water and leafless trees under a blue sky

Where the Bayou Still Speaks – Arnaudville, Louisiana: A Small Town with a Creole Heart

Deep in the heart of Acadiana, where two bayous meet and nearly four in ten people still speak French at home, the small Louisiana town of Arnaudville carries a cultural memory that much of the modern world has forgotten how to hold. For International Kreol Magazine, this is not simply a Louisiana story. It is part of a wider Creole world, where language, ancestry, migration and survival continue to shape identity across generations and continents. This is a story about a place that has never stopped listening to its ancestors.
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St George’s Hall – The Cultural Heart of Liverpool

Some buildings ask to be admired. St George’s Hall asks something harder. It asks you to stop, to look up, and to understand what a city believes about itself when it decides to build something that will outlast everything it knows. Liverpool was the second port of an empire, and that empire’s wealth moved through these docks in every direction, including ships that carried enslaved people across the Atlantic long before the Hall’s first stone was laid. Later, nine million more would pass through by choice, carrying music, faith, and memory from Ireland, West Africa, China, and the Caribbean, and some of it never left. This is the story of the building Liverpool raised to hold that weight, and of the Creole city it became without ever using the word.
Benin

The Lost City That Was Never Lost – Benin, Memory, and the Myth of Disappearance

They called it lost. But Benin was never gone. For centuries before the first European ship anchored off its coast, the Kingdom of Benin was one of the most powerful and sophisticated civilisations on earth. Its capital was a city of wide straight roads, royal bronze, sacred ivory, and walls that stretched further than the eye could follow. Its Oba was divine. Its artisans were the finest in the region. Its merchants traded with the world. Then came 1897. A British naval expedition invaded, burned the royal palace, exiled the king, and carried off thousands of artworks that would spend the next century in foreign museums. In the aftermath, colonial writers reached for a convenient word. They called Benin lost. It was never lost. It was taken. And now, slowly, it is coming back.
Live band performing on an outdoor festival stage with musicians and a large banner reading 'Festival International de Louisiane' in Lafayette, LA.

Forty Years of Fête – How Festival International de Louisiane Turned a Louisiana Street Into a Meeting Place for the World

There are festivals that fill a calendar, and there are festivals that fill a city. Festival International de Louisiane belongs to the second kind. For five days every April, Downtown Lafayette stops behaving like a Louisiana town of modest size and starts behaving like a crossroads of the world, with a Malian guitar line drifting past a crawfish stand and a Belgian stilt walker weaving through a crowd that speaks a dozen languages before lunch. This year the festival turned forty, and Kreol Magazine travelled to Acadiana to see what four decades of that idea looks like in practice. What we found was not simply a music festival with good food attached. We found a working demonstration of something this magazine has spent its life arguing for, that Creole culture, Cajun culture, and the wider Francophone world are not separate rooms to be visited one at a time, but a single table everyone is welcome to sit at together. A festival with no ticket booth and no closed doors, built entirely on the belief that joy shared is joy multiplied. What follows is our account of those five days on Jefferson Street. The music that carried across continents in a single afternoon. The food that turned a city block into a communal table. The strangers who, by the second evening, were no longer strangers at all. And the quiet, considerable achievement of a small Louisiana city that has spent forty years proving the world is always better when it shows up together.
Two men in suits sit on a stage with microphones, one resting a hand on the other's shoulder during a musical event.

A Launch,a Celebration, and a Morning Filled with Kreol Spirit – Kreol Magazine Launch of Issue 43

At 10:00 a.m. on 25 April, First Horizon Bank opened its doors to a morning filled with warmth, music, conversation, and celebration as International Kreol Magazine launched Issue 43 ahead of Festival International. What began as a magazine launch quickly became something much larger: a joyful gathering of community, culture, memory, and pride. At the centre of the celebration was Jerry Prejean, whose life story and portrait on the front cover gave Issue 43 its powerful emotional heart. Guests arrived not only to honour Jerry, but to celebrate the stories, people, and traditions that continue to shape Louisiana’s Creole and cultural identity. With opening words from Georgina Dhillon, Editor and Publisher of International Kreol Magazine, followed by a live discussion with Jerry Prejean, music entertainment, and brunch, the morning unfolded with laughter, reflection, and genuine connection. Copies of Issue 43 moved from table to table, sparking conversations and memories as guests turned the pages. This was more than the launch of a magazine. It was a reminder that every community has stories worth preserving, and every issue of Kreol Magazine helps keep those stories alive.
Book cover: 'A Doctor's Prescription for Health Care Reform' with a teal design, showing a man and a woman with a baby.

Book Review – A Doctor’s Prescription for Health Care Reform

A Doctor’s Prescription for Health Care Reform is a powerful and timely book that speaks directly to one of the most urgent issues in modern society: inequality in health care. Written by Dr Rahn Kennedy Bailey, a respected physician, psychiatrist, educator and former President of the National Medical Association, the book explores the deep-rooted disparities, stigma and barriers that continue to affect minority and underserved communities.
Louisiana Creole Shrimp and Okra Gumbo

Recipe – Louisiana Creole Shrimp and Okra Gumbo

This recipe is built for a family gathering, the way gumbo was always intended to be made. It scales easily, improves when made a day ahead, and fills a kitchen with a smell that brings people to the table without being asked.
Two musicians playing accordions on stage at a Mardi Gras festival; left: smiling man in beige shirt with red accordion in front of a Courville Mardi Gras banner, right: energetic man in red shirt and sunglasses with a white accordion under a tent.

ACADIA PARISH- The accordion sound that connects two cultures

Jerry Prejean’s journey from a tight-knit community in Lafayette to becoming Acadiana Market President at First Horizon Bank is a testament to hard work, mentorship, and dedication to service. With a career spanning over 30 years in banking, he has played a pivotal role in economic development, financial literacy, and youth mentorship. His legacy is not just in finance but in bridging communities, fostering opportunities, and inspiring the next generation of leaders.
Fried Bonito with Pumpkin

Recipes – Fried Bonito with Pumpkin

This dish reflects the everyday cooking of island households, where fresh fish from the sea is paired with vegetables grown close to home. Pumpkin adds natural sweetness and body to the dish, balancing the ric...