Javouhey

Javouhey is one of the two Hmong villages of French Guiana, settled in the late 1970s by refugee families from Laos who were given land and turned it into the territory's vegetable garden, and its Sunday market is the reason to come: stalls of produce grown in the surrounding fields, Hmong embroidery, and bowls of noodle soup eaten at long tables. Like Cacao, the other Hmong village, it feeds Cayenne's markets all week.

Background

Javouhey was founded in 1978, the second Hmong village in French Guiana after Cacao. It stands on the site of an agricultural colony that Anne-Marie Javouhey set up in 1822, and the place was chosen because living and working conditions resembled those of the settlers' homeland. By 2005 about 1,000 people lived here, in a village covering about 1 square mile. It has two primary schools, the newer one finished in 2006, two churches, one of them Catholic, and three family-owned stores, one with a fuel station. The local football club, AS Javouhey Mana, won the Coupe de Guyane in 1989-90 and 1990-91.

Source: Wikipedia, "Javouhey"

Highlights

• The Sunday market - produce, embroidery and cooked food at long tables.
• The Hmong farms - the fields that supply much of the territory's vegetables.
• The noodle soup - the bowls that draw people out from Saint-Laurent and beyond.
• The 1970s settlement - a village built by refugee families from Laos.

When to go

Sunday morning is the market and the reason to time the visit. July to November is the dry season. Other days the village is simply quiet farmland.

Good to know

Outside Sunday morning there is very little to see or do. It is a long drive for a market unless combined with Mana and the coast. Stalls wind down by early afternoon.

Nearby

Mana is north, and Saint-Laurent is south.

Key facts