The lives of hundreds of Somalis intersect in the suburb of Mayfair in Johannesburg. A space of opportunity, of refuge, and a home for the Somali diaspora in the city. A multi-layered site where Somali migrants, as urban refugees, renegotiate cultural practices in a foreign, and occasionally hostile, metropolitan context, where spaces and customs that were left behind are recreated in the daily life of the neighbourhood. Metropolitan nomads is an intimate look at the everyday life of Somali migrants in Johannesburg, where collective stories of migration and survival interweave with the individual desires and hopes of seeking a better life outside a country shattered by decades of internal conflict.
Metropolitan nomads: A journey through Joburg's Little Mogadishu is a collaborative project between documentary photographer Salym Fayad and researcher Nereida Ripero-Muñiz, supported by the African Centre for Migration & Society and Method: Visual: Explore at Wits University.