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A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp elder mentally and physically fit, and allows him to monitor the wellbeing of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped 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 transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again forced him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is located 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 homeland [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 dreams of returning to one day.”

First established as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In furthermore, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees live 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 governmental and business centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country ungovernable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have sharply reduced 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 undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a permanent settlement, including its own financial institution, 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 registered in school. New entrants are processed by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, security patrols protect the camp from the risk of armed groups 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 operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those injured by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also spreading awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s requirements are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough financial support or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle what little we have, but it is not enough for the requirements 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 sit 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 offering school meals, essential food aid, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most needy while working relentlessly to obtain new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only goods in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees grow crops and keep animals so they can earn an income and enhance their standard of living.

Though Malha supervises everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most needy 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 are entirely reliant 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 pride.”