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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 dwelling since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp leader healthy in mind and body, and permits him to assess the condition of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg insurgents fought with the army in his home Timbuktu region.

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 unrest once again pushed him across the border.

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

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have not once visited 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.”

Originally planned as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In also, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui area. More than half are under 18.

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

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] assist almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt 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 features of a long-term settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are processed by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

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

Some residents have adopted new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and run an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those wounded by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also spreading awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s requirements are obvious.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough funding or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands 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 cluster by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is largely basic, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still providing school meals, basic food distributions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most at-risk while working continuously to acquire new funding through the diversification of our support network.”

The meals are supported by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start business programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can make money and enhance their quality of life.

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

“When you leave your country, you lose everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“We thank 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.”