Here's a mini-tour.
These are some old pharmaceuticals, made from local trees.
A stuffed blowfish.
A couple of birds. They showed the process by which the animals are stuffed by a taxidermist but it was too gross for me.
A picture of the migratory trajectories that some birds in French Guiana fly. I don't think you can tell from this picture, but there are little LEDs that light up. This trajectory that's lit shows how egrets fly. They go from my hometown in Connecticut to Cayenne. How fun.
If you don't like bugs, hit 'End' to get to the bottom of the page, and scroll up till you reach the steel ball-weights from a ball and chain. In the meantime, here are some gigantic bugs.
Look at the size of these beetles. Insane!
These are my favorite. They are called morphos, and they're everywhere. Sooo beautiful.
These are ball weights from a ball and chain from the prison at Devil's Island.
This painting is of a scene from the 1880 gold rush in French Guiana. This gold would later be how France repaid its debt from the Marshall Plan. Doesn't colonialism rule?
An outfit that a prisoner at Devil's Island would have worn. Also, one of the few black mannequins in Cayenne, which is weird, because almost none of the prisoners were black. They mostly came from Europe, and were therefore mostly white.
A couple of pictures of famous prisoners.
A model of a traditional house.
The proclamation of the end of slavery (I think it was the second end of slavery, since Napoleon brought it back and reenslaved all the blacks). The picture below it shows the creole translation. It was one of the earliest documents written in the local creole.
A picture of a prisoner being put through mouillage or 'soaking'. Those nearby sharks and the ball-and-chain on his foot are competing forces.
Oh and after the museum, I walked by the Hôtel de ville (kind of like a town hall, but not quite), and a wedding had just taken place there. Talk about a ball-and-chain.
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