This is the sec­ond part of my “graf­fiti study”. Like in the first post, all the pic­tures were taken in France last month. Let’s have a look… you’ll find the com­men­tary and trans­la­tion below.

From top left to bottom:

• Résis­ter c’est créer & pas de fas­cistes: “to cre­ate to to resist” and “no fas­cists”. These bumper stick­ers were found on a FIAT car parked nearby my par­ents’ place.
• On veut une vie de riche!: “We want to live like rich peo­ple!”. Another sticker found on the Loire river’s main bridge. All these stick­ers are dis­trib­uted by No Pasaran, a French left-wing activism group. Pretty pop­u­lar in France and yes, I once was part if it. In another life.
  
• Sarko va rem­placer Ingrid Bet­tan­court chez les FARC. Elle sera libre… et nous aussi!: “Sarkozy is going to take Ingrid Bettancourt’s place in Colom­bia. She will be free… and so will we!” I found this one in the sub­way and found it hilar­i­ous. Let me explain… Ingrid Betan­ncourt is a French-Colombian politi­cian who was kid­napped in Colom­bia by the FARC (Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia) in 2002, when run­ning for Pres­i­dent. Noth­ing funny here. Now the French Pres­i­dent stepped in lately and offered, among other things, to go take her place in the jun­gle (he later offered to travel there… not to take her place any­more). Peo­ple ques­tioned this hasty mis­sion and some may have even hinted it was a way for Sarkozy to appear as an hero and regain some pop­u­lar­ity…
  
• Que les humains, aussi nom­breux que les poux, s’agenouillent enfin et fassent de longues prières…: “May human peo­ple, as numer­ous as lice, kneel down and pray”. This mys­te­ri­ous sen­tence was found in Rennes and signed “King Oedi­pus”. So deep I don’t get it.
  
• Pas besoin d’eau, pas besoin de jardin, mais des fleurs: “we don’t need water, we don’t need gar­dens, we need flow­ers” — a poetic graf­fiti in a bohemian borough.
• Allée des femmes sans papiers en lutte: “Alley of the strug­gling ille­gal women immi­grant”. This pop­u­lar square was renamed fol­low­ing a demonstration.
• The chicken in a cage: I was walk­ing in a bohemian dis­trict when I noticed a small net­ted open­ing at the bot­tom of the building’s wall. Some­one had put a cou­ple of ter­ra­cotta chicken in there and had writ­ten on the wall: “we are held in hostage, please notice our fam­ily”. I’m sorry to report I wasn’t able to locate the chicken’s fam­ily, so they might still be there.
  
• Le soleil a rendez-vous avec la lune: “the sun has a rendez-vous with the moon”. This is the first stanza of a famous French nurs­ery rythm. It was a chalk drawing/ writ­ing I found in Paris.

And that’s it, no more graf­fiti I promise! Sat­ur­day will be my last post for the Canadian-ism(s) series and next week, the contest’s win­ners. But right now, I need a Coke… and sleep…

Related arti­cles:

1. Rebel France (1÷2)
2. Rebel France IV
3. Rebel France III
4. 8 Things More Expen­sive in Canada than in France
5. Lucile And Mur­taza: From France and India to Montreal