Rokaya Mendru worked seven days a week, trudging up and down Johannesburg’s streets from sunrise to sunset selling mobile phone vouchers.
But Sunday afternoons were sacrosanct, said her younger brother, Michael Limbani, and his wife, Ines Adam. That was when she traded her yellow vendor’s vest for her best threads and sauntered down to the city’s trendy, gentrified corner, Maboneng, to have her picture taken by the street photographers who make a living taking portraits of tourists and local fashionistas.
Ms. Mendru, 35, was neither. She moved to South Africa in 2019, recently divorced and desperate to feed her four children back in Blantyre, the commercial capital of one of Africa’s poorest nations, Malawi. She earned about 9,000 rand ($475) a month, and on a good month, as much as 12,000 rand ($633). But almost all of it went back to Malawi to feed, clothe and educate her children: Banatu, 18; Peter, 14; Ishmail, 10; and Ellen, the only girl, 6.
In Johannesburg, she shared a room with Mr. Limbani and Ms. Adam on the second floor of the building. She cooked for the family and they shared everything. Her rice was perfectly fluffy, and her meat stew tasted like home, Mr. Limbani said. She never quite adjusted to Johannesburg winters, though, wrapping herself in three sweaters and a jacket to stand at intersections as she worked, her brother said.
Sunday afternoons were hers alone. In one photograph, she wears a figure-hugging blue skirt; in another, a royal blue lace dress. In yet another, standing back-to-back with a friend, she wears torn denim jeans. These were all outfits she, as a devout Muslim woman, would not have worn back home in Malawi. Her relatives didn’t quite understand it, but they indulged her, saving her portraits.
Lynsey Chutel
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