🔗 Share this article

A number of times 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 home since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp leader mentally and physically fit, and permits him to check on the welfare of other occupants.

His initial stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg rebels clashed with the army in his home Timbuktu region.

After four years as a refugee, he returned home and worked for a year as a social worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg conflict once again pushed him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young residents of Mbera, which is positioned approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is painful 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.”

First established as a few thousand huts, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In also, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui area. More than half are under 18.

Government officials say the area is the third-biggest human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country lawless. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have drastically cut funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] assist 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 funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

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

Nearby, police patrols guard the camp from the danger of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new duties with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those wounded by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are obvious.

“We have the determination, 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 provided one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them gather by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is almost plain, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still providing school meals, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most needy while working tirelessly to acquire new funding through the broadening of our donor base.”

The meals are powered by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can generate funds and enhance their quality of life.

Though Malha supervises everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ support the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.

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

“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 self-respect.”