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Rokaya Mendru, 35: Posing on Sunday afternoons

Rokaya Mendru labored seven days every week, trudging up and down Johannesburg’s streets from dawn to sundown promoting cell phone vouchers.

However Sunday afternoons had been sacrosanct, stated her youthful brother, Michael Limbani, and his spouse, Ines Adam. That was when she traded her yellow vendor’s vest for her finest threads and sauntered all the way down to the town’s stylish, gentrified nook, Maboneng, to have her image taken by the road photographers who make a dwelling taking portraits of vacationers and native fashionistas.

Ms. Mendru, 35, was neither. She moved to South Africa in 2019, lately divorced and determined to feed her 4 kids again in Blantyre, the business capital of one among Africa’s poorest nations, Malawi. She earned about 9,000 rand ($475) a month, and on a superb month, as a lot as 12,000 rand ($633). However nearly all of it went again to Malawi to feed, dress and educate her kids: Banatu, 18; Peter, 14; Ishmail, 10; and Ellen, the one woman, 6.

In Johannesburg, she shared a room with Mr. Limbani and Ms. Adam on the second ground of the constructing. She cooked for the household and so they shared every thing. Her rice was completely fluffy, and her meat stew tasted like residence, Mr. Limbani stated. She by no means fairly adjusted to Johannesburg winters, although, wrapping herself in three sweaters and a jacket to face at intersections as she labored, her brother stated.