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Excerpt From "Global Post"
"The UN refugee agency estimates there are about 50,000 displaced people in Bamako, most of them arriving only with what they could carry.

Aissata Yattara, a 40-year-old mother of six, has taken in 15 relatives over the last year — from Timbuktu and elsewhere in the north.

“They are family, I cannot abandon them,” she said.

Her crumbling two-room bungalow in a city suburb, where sewage runs in the gutters and electricity is sporadic, has been transformed into a dormitory with mattresses covering every inch of floor space.

A towering, good-humored matriarch, Yattara bore the extra burden lightly. But she said she needed assistance, and it was not coming.

“Life was not easy before, now I support so many more but nobody is helping us,” she said

Those still in the north, however, have it the toughest.

“The humanitarian situation in the north is deteriorating very quickly because of security, but also the lack of food,” Arroyo said.

Food supplies are perennially scarce in the arid parts of Mali, north of the Niger River. But the extremist takeover last year and the recent military intervention have worsened the food situation to the extent that, according to Arroyo, “the north will become unlivable soon.”"