Conseil international d’études francophones (CIEF)
July 1-8, 2007.
Christine Duff
Following our foray up the crique Gabriel, we were welcomed by the nearby town of Roura with a dinner, drumming and show of traditional guianese dress for working in the abatti and for selling one’s goods at the market in Cayenne. A group of young Hmong dancers from the town of Cacao treated us to several dances.
In the mid-1970s, there was a wave of immigration from Laos when the Hmong people were being pushed out by Chinese communism. Cacao was founded in French Guiana in 1977 and is today a vibrant community of about 1000 people. This is the largest Hmong community in Guiana.
At the end of the evening, I nearly missed the bus back to Cayenne. I had been engrossed in a conversation with a woman who grew up in a small village along the crique Gabriel. The village has since disappeared due to the migration of its twenty or so families to cities like Cayenne and Kourou to find work. I got back to the hotel that night pleasantly exhausted.
On the next day, July 5th, it was back to the University for more sessions and a couple of hours spent taking in the wonders of the book displays. French Guiana’s publishing house Ibis Rouge and L’Ancrage, a bookstore from Kourou, had marvellous offerings, many of which are hard to get in Canada. My suitcase on my return home weighed about three times what it did on the outbound journey, due solely to my book purchases.
That evening, the CIEF had its anniversary celebration with terrific food, music and dancing. I made it an early night, though, as I had already presented my paper and was planning to play hooky the next day and visit the lles du Salut. To do this meant getting from my hotel to the Place des Palmistes, the main meeting spot in downtown Cayenne, bright and early. I had to leave Guiana on the Saturday and didn’t want to miss experiencing the Iles du Salut.
When I got to the Place des Palmistes the next morning at 6am, I was surprised to find the shops opening up and things already bustling. But then I remembered that things in Cayenne pretty much stop between 1pm and 4pm due to the heat, so the early start to the day made perfect sense. We made the 30-minute drive from Cayenne to Kourou, where several companies offer boat crossings to the three islands that make up the former penal colony. I chose a trimaran, anxious to ride on the mesh between the hulls and watch the ocean move by under me. It took about an hour to get to the first island, Ile St. Joseph. This island can be covered on foot in about an hour. The prison ruins are untouched and beyond haunting, especially since I was alone, surrounded by the prison compound and hearing nothing but the cries of birds and wind in the coconut trees. There is a cemetery here, but the headstones are unreadable. I discovered that these are not the graves of inmates, but rather those of the various directors and prison workers, and their families. Inmates were not accorded such a dignified burial and were simply thrown out to sea. The cruelty of the place was palpable.
The largest island, Ile Royale, is a two-minute boat ride from Ile St. Joseph and has a small museum and an inn, so the experience was not as “raw”. From both islands, the most infamous, Devil’s Island, is clearly visible. It, however, is not open to visitors as its shore is quite treacherous. It looms over the other two islands, remaining somewhat mysterious.
My trek home started the next day and I was sorry to leave Guiana and not have time to know the place and its people better. I did leave, though, with a much better sense of this part of the world and a better appreciation of its place in the French-speaking world. No longer will I think of Guiana as l’enfer vert or a mere third name when talking about the French Caribbean. Its population may be small and its geographical situation quite different from the more well-known ‘departments’ of France, Guadeloupe and Martinique, but it now occupies a solid place in this writer’s mind. I have had at least a glimpse of Guiana’s unique reality which will, I hope, inform my work.