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A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and permits him to monitor the welfare of other occupants.

His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg rebels battled with the army in his home Timbuktu province.

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 conflict once again compelled him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger residents of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is painful because a refugee always has dual loyalties: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he longs to revisit one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In addition, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country lawless. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have drastically cut funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue essential nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a long-term settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children registered in school. New comers are registered by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, police patrols secure the camp from the risk of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new duties with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those injured by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough resources or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle what little we have, but it is not enough for the needs of the camp.”

In the schools, the children are given one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is largely basic, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still providing school meals, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most needy while working continuously to acquire new funding through the broadening of our support network.”

The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only products in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch business programmes to help refugees farm and rear animals so they can generate funds and boost their livelihood.

Though Malha supervises everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ assist the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.

“We are grateful to 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 dignity.”