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

His initial stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg rebels fought with the army in his native Timbuktu area.

After four years as a refugee, he came back and worked for a year as a community worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again compelled him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is positioned approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [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.”

First established as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In furthermore, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the third-biggest human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial capitals.

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

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

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

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols secure the camp from the danger of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new roles with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also spreading awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough resources or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we reuse what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands of the camp.”

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

“We’re still supplying school meals, essential food aid, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most vulnerable while working tirelessly to acquire new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are supported by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only products in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees cultivate and rear animals so they can generate funds and improve their livelihood.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most vulnerable 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 appreciate 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 self-respect.”