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A number of times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator healthy in mind and body, and permits him to check on the condition of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg insurgents clashed with the army in his home Timbuktu province.

After four years as a refugee, he went back and worked for a year as a community 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 especially sad for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their homeland [and] that is heartbreaking because a refugee always has split affections: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he dreams of returning to one day.”

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

Government authorities say the area is the third-biggest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, running from a militant uprising that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have drastically cut 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 discontinue crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the features of a established settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 shops, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are registered by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

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

Some residents have adopted new roles with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and operate an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those injured by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also promoting awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough funding or materials,” 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 cluster by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few beans.

“We’re still offering school meals, basic food distributions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working relentlessly to secure new funding through the expansion of our support network.”

The meals are powered by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only goods in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees cultivate and keep animals so they can make money and enhance their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns 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 endure hardship.

“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 dignity.”