I
n Mauritania between 2012 and
2014 FAREstudio operated at the
Mbera Refugee Camp as ‘construction
expert’ for Italian NGO INTERSOS, an
implementing partner of a UN agency
within the framework of a primary
education program aimed at improving
teaching-and-learning provisions in
the camp and nearby communities. The
brief was to provide 60 classrooms,
‘transitional’ yet better, in terms of comfort and
durability, than the tents usually provided to
front an emergency. Mbera Camp is located in
the southeast corner of Mauritania [50km from
the Malian border] and provides hospitality to
68.000 refugees escaped from Mali after the
2012 crisis.
The region has a long history as a refugee
destination: in the 1990s the area was occupied
by displaced people from Mali; the remnants
of those days are still in place in the form of
two compounds, MBera I (Arab Berbers),
Mbera II (Touareg). These settlements are now
consolidated to the point of being termed host
communities, same as the nearby (20km North
West) village of Bassikonou. As expected, the
local climate is very hot. Year-round temperature
variations are contained, yet diurnal variations
can be extreme. Rainfall is insufficient and
irregular.
The Harmattan, a hot, dry and dust-laden wind,
blows from the Sahara throughout the long dry
season. Wind-borne dust is a scourge that afflicts
the whole region, infiltrating every corner and
making it easier to get used to it rather than
trying to fight it.
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Initially, FAREstudio’s construction expert
was in charge of implementing an existing
‘design model’, setting off its production,
selecting and coordinating a local works
supervision consultant. The construction expert
role included the ability to suggest design
improvements, an opportunity that has been
taken up in the light of the limitations found