🔗 Share this article

A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp elder healthy in mind and body, and permits him to monitor the wellbeing of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his home Timbuktu province.

After four years as a refugee, he went back and worked for a year as a community worker before transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg unrest once again pushed him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have not laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [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 hopes to go back to one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand huts, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In also, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell 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 governmental and business capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, fleeing a jihadist insurgency that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country lawless. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have drastically cut funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] assist almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop essential nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a long-term settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, police patrols secure the camp from the risk of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new duties with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and run an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those wounded by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s demands are evident.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough resources or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the requirements of the camp.”

In the schools, the children are provided one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them cluster by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still supplying school meals, essential food aid, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most vulnerable while working tirelessly to secure new funding through the broadening of our donor base.”

The meals are supported by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only goods in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start business programmes to help refugees cultivate and keep animals so they can generate funds and improve their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ support the most needy households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you endure hardship.

“We appreciate 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 self-respect.”