The Sahara Marathon is an international sport event to demonstrate solidarity with the Saharawi people and this year reaches its seventh edition.
Run by the Saharawi sport committee and organized by volunteers from all over the world, the Sahara Marathon, which along with the standard-distance marathon also includes the shorter distances of 21km, 10km and 5km and a race for children, is aimed at promoting sport activity among young Saharawis and financing a humanitarian program, which this year will be the completion of the sports centre and the building of a workshop for recycled materials.

Close to Tindouf, within the Algerian territory, at a very short distance from Western Sahara and Mauritania, there is a border zone which has been home to 200,000 Saharawi refugees for more than 30 years.

Each refugee camp is a “wilaya”, that is a little town, which bears the name of the corresponding abandoned Western Sahara city.

In Dakhla the sand creates majestic dunes, but most part of the surrounding area is “hammada”, that is a place whose climate is always extremely cold or extremely hot.

If you take a walk around the refugee camp, you will never feel alone, meeting people, children wanting to know your nationality or asking for candies, people stopping to talk to you and others who will just say hello without even stopping; most people will offer you some tea, the mark of hospitality for Saharawi people.

It would be polite to take at least three cups. The first one tastes bitter as life, the second is sweet as love while the third is soft as death.