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A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp leader mentally and physically fit, and enables him to assess the condition of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg separatists battled 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 pushed him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics 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 young ones who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is difficult 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 huts, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the number three human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial capitals.

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 extensive areas of the country lawless. 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 worrying. 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] help almost 90,000 people with both nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue vital nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” 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 initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children signed up in school. New arrivals are documented by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols protect the camp from the danger of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

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

But the camp’s requirements are clear.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough resources or supplies,” 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 sit 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 offering school meals, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most vulnerable while working relentlessly to acquire new funding through the diversification of our donor base.”

The meals are supported by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only goods in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can earn an income and boost their livelihood.

Though Malha oversees everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most needy households, his heart aches to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice 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 appreciate 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.”