A number of mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp elder mentally and physically fit, and permits him to check on the wellbeing of other residents.
His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg insurgents fought with the army in his home Timbuktu region.
After four years as a refugee, he returned home and worked for a year as a community worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again pushed him across the border.
The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.
“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have not laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their homeland [and] that is difficult because a refugee always has split affections: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he dreams of returning to one day.”
First established as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In addition, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.
Government officials say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial centers.
Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a jihadist insurgency that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country lawless. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have sharply reduced funding this year.
“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt essential nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.
The camp has many of the trappings of a established settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children enrolled in school. New arrivals are registered by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.
Nearby, police patrols guard the camp from the threat of militants just a few miles from the border.
Some residents have adopted new duties with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and operate an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those maimed by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also spreading awareness about teaching girls.
But the camp’s needs are clear.
“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough financial support or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle what little we have, but it is not enough for the needs of the camp.”
In the schools, the children are served one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few beans.
“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most vulnerable while working continuously to secure new funding through the broadening of our donor base.”
The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only products in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can make money and enhance their standard of living.
Though Malha oversees everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.
“When you leave your country, you forfeit everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you depend only on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you endure hardship.
“We thank the Mauritanian authorities and the humanitarian organisations for what they have done for us but it is not the same as being in your own country, working with your own hands and living with dignity.”
