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A number of mornings 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 home since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and allows him to assess the wellbeing of other residents.

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

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

The former math and science teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger residents of Mbera, which is located 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 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 hopes to go back to one day.”

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

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

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, running from a jihadist insurgency that took over 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 neighbouring settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

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

The camp has many of the features of a permanent settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are processed by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, police patrols secure the camp from the danger of militants just a few miles from the border.

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

But the camp’s requirements are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough resources 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 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 largely basic, save for a few beans.

“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 concentrating on the most needy while working relentlessly to secure new funding through the broadening of our donor base.”

The meals are funded by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only products in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start business programmes to help refugees cultivate and keep animals so they can generate funds and improve their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most disadvantaged households, his heart aches to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you forfeit everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, 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 self-respect.”