Many mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator healthy in mind and body, and enables him to check on the welfare of other inhabitants.
His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg rebels 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 transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again forced him across the border.
The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young residents of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.
“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [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 longs to revisit one day.”
Originally planned as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In addition, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.
Government representatives say the area is the number three human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business centers.
Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country uncontrollable. 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 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 nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt crucial nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.
The camp has many of the trappings of a permanent 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 amplifiers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.
Nearby, police patrols guard the camp from the risk of militants just a few miles from the border.
Some residents have assumed new duties with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and run an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.
But the camp’s requirements are obvious.
“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough financial support or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands 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 beans.
“We’re still supplying school meals, staple provisions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working relentlessly to secure new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”
The meals are funded by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only products in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees cultivate and rear animals so they can make money and enhance their standard of living.
Though Malha manages everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ support the most needy households, his heart aches to return to Mali.
“When you leave your country, you forfeit everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.
“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 pride.”
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