Cacao

Cacao is a Hmong village on a river bank in the forest, founded in 1977 when refugees from Laos were settled in French Guiana after the war. Wooden houses stand on stilts along one street, and the community grows most of the vegetables sold in Cayenne. The Sunday morning market is the reason to come, with pho and spring rolls eaten at trestle tables and embroidered story cloths for sale. A small insect museum holds the huge beetles and morpho butterflies of the surrounding forest. Around a thousand people live in the village and Hmong is still the first language.