Families Across Mauritania Attempt to Rebuild Their Lives Between Flood and Drought

Kadia was one of more than 4,500 people affected by the October 2024 floods in Guidimakha, with over 600 displaced. Yet standing amid the wreckage, what struck her most wasn’t despair – it was a question: what now?

That question – and how Mauritanian communities are answering it – is what truly matters. This isn’t just a story of loss. It’s a story of people learning to live with a changing world.

Mauritania sits at the edge of the Sahara Desert, where life has always depended on a delicate balance between people and their fragile environment.

Nearly 80 per cent of the country is arid land, and that balance is being tested by accelerating climate shocks. Rainy seasons have grown increasingly unpredictable – sometimes withholding rain entirely, sometimes unleashing it all at once.

As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift, droughts linger, floods arrive without warning, and the soil erodes further under the combined pressure of wind and overuse.

In regions like Guidimakha and Hodh el Chargui, herds starve, crops fail, and the water and grazing lands that families have relied on for generations are steadily disappearing.

For many, there has been only one option – to leave. Across Mauritania, climate-driven migration has become a means of survival.

Families move from one village to another, while herders and young people cross borders in search of work, water, and stability. Leaving often makes sense – sometimes it is the only choice.

But some have chosen a harder path – to stay and adapt.

In Gouraye, a small town near the Senegal River, Kadia has become a source of strength for her community. As a widow and head of household in a place where that role is never easy, she has found purpose in one simple act – bringing women together.

Every week, they gather to talk about survival.

“The seasons are no longer the same,” Kadia says. “Sometimes we wait weeks for rain, then it all falls in one day. When that happens, we meet to plan how to save water, care for our gardens, and stay ready for the next storm.”

Out of these conversations came action. The women of Gouraye organized cooperatives and savings groups – small pools of money that families could draw from during difficult months.

They built communal gardens and planted trees that could withstand dry spells. They learned to preserve food, reuse water, and stretch resources. And they began teaching their daughters these skills too.

“Before, we waited for help,” Kadia says. “Now, we act.”

It’s easy to overlook this kind of work – it doesn’t make headlines or appear in reports as neatly as infrastructure projects do. But it is the ground-level work of resilience.

Women like Kadia are building networks of knowledge and solidarity that hold communities together when external systems fail. They are teaching a different kind of survival – collective, practical, and rooted in place.

In the same region, Moctar, a farmer in his forties, walks through his field, carefully inspecting the green shoots pushing through the soil. His home was destroyed during the floods of October 2024.

“When the water came, we had no time to save anything,” he says. “We rebuilt from almost nothing. This year, I am trying again, planting millet and beans in the hope that the rains will be kind.”

That hope isn’t naive optimism. Moctar is experimenting with drought-resistant seeds, learning soil restoration techniques, and working with neighbours to reinforce natural barriers against erosion – small, practical adaptations that can mean the difference between a harvest and hunger.

“These small actions matter,” he says. “When we work together, when we take care of the land, it gives back to us.”

There is dignity in this approach. Moctar isn’t waiting for outside help – he’s studying the land, learning its new temperament, and figuring out how to live with it.

When Mariam lost her home in the floods, she thought she had lost her future too. She ended up in a displacement site in Woumpou with hundreds of other families, many just as uncertain as she was.

But Mariam did something small and radical: she opened a store.

“When I lost my home, I thought I had also lost my future,” she says. “But when we arrived here, I realized that life must go on.”

It’s a modest structure, built with help from neighbours, with wooden shelves and a simple counter.

She stocks rice, soap, and oil – the basics – but the store has become far more than that. It’s now a place where displaced families gather, where news is shared, and where credit is extended to those having a particularly bad month. Mariam has become a pillar of a community that didn’t exist a few months ago.

Her shop earns enough to support her children’s schooling. More importantly, it restores her sense of purpose and gives her and dozens of others a measure of control over their lives.

“Even if we have been displaced, we are not powerless,” she says. “We can rebuild our dignity by helping each other. This store is my way of standing back up.”

Following the devastating floods of October 2024, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) supported affected families with relocation assistance and shelter kits, helping them rebuild safer homes.

For Kadia, Moctar, and Mariam, adapting is about more than getting by. It’s about rebuilding their lives and holding on to what keeps them together.

“We’ve learned to rebuild differently,” Kadia says. “To plan together, to protect our village. The floods took our homes, but not our determination.”

The photographs featured in this story were taken by Alexander Bee and are part of the exhibition “Climate Footprints: Portraits of Lives and Landscapes in Transition,” organized under IOM’s Climate Change and Migration Data (CCMD) Programme, funded by the Government of Denmark. The exhibition is open to the public at the French Institute in Nouakchott, Mauritania, and available online.

This story was written by Alessandro Lira, IOM Subregional Media and Communications Officer in Denmark.

*SOURCE: International Organization for Migration. Go to ORIGINAL:  https://storyteller.iom.int/stories/families-across-mauritania-attempt-rebuild-their-lives-between-flood-and-drought 2025 Human Wrongs Watch