Unemployment is high in the suburbs of Dakar, even if you have a degree. Stricter anti-immigration laws, that our own government support, have closed any legal way of going abroad to find work. Desperate people look for other solutions. Many travel across the desert, or take their chances on rickety boats, putting their lives at risk. All because they can’t find work and live with dignity in their own country. Some have died on the way. Others were sent back, having lost all their money and papers. They have to start again from scratch. Before they left they had little or no knowledge of the dangers that they would face. So we use the walls to inform them, give knowledge and support.
Mad Zoo traces the origins of Dakar street art to the Set/Setal protests (Wolof for “be clean/make clean”) in the late 1980s. Young people from Dakar’s poorest neighborhoods came together to clean up their streets and beautify their surroundings, picking trash and painting communal murals, sometimes referred to as the “talking walls” of Dakar. The legacy of graffiti as a positive, made by the people, for the people, lasts to this day. Graffiti has never been illegal in Senegal, something that is puzzling to writers in countries where the adrenalin rush of the chase is part of the thrill. In Senegal, the rush seems to come from giving back to your community.