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Many days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in southeastern 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 assess the welfare of other residents.

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

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

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

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have not laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [and] that is heartbreaking because a refugee always has dual loyalties: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he hopes to go back to one day.”

First established as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In furthermore, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government officials say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, running from a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country ungovernable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now ceased USAID – have drastically cut funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] support almost 90,000 people with both nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue essential nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” 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 shops, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children registered in school. New entrants are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, security patrols protect the camp from the danger of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those wounded by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also spreading awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s needs are obvious.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough funding or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the needs of the camp.”

In the schools, the children are provided one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them gather by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is almost plain, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still providing school meals, essential food aid, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working tirelessly to secure new funding through the diversification of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only items in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch business programmes to help refugees cultivate and raise animals so they can earn an income and improve their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ assist the most vulnerable households, his heart longs to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you depend only on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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 pride.”