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A number of times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks 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 coordinator mentally and physically fit, and enables him to check on the welfare of other occupants.

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

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

The former math and science teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger residents of Mbera, which is positioned 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 split affections: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he longs to revisit one day.”

Originally planned as a few thousand huts, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In furthermore, it is approximated 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 number three human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts 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 neighbouring 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] support almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt crucial nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the characteristics of a established settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children enrolled in school. New entrants are documented by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

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

Some residents have taken on new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and manage an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also spreading awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s demands are evident.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough funding or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the requirements 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 gather 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 supplying school meals, essential food aid, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most needy while working continuously to secure new funding through the broadening of our funding sources.”

The meals are funded by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees grow crops and keep animals so they can make money and enhance their standard of living.

Though Malha oversees everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most vulnerable households, his heart aches to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you lose everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you depend only on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.

“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.”