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Several days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys 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 leader mentally and physically fit, and permits him to assess the condition of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg insurgents 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 becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again forced him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is positioned approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids 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 dual loyalties: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he hopes to go back to one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand huts, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In addition, 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 representatives say the area is the number three human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, escaping a extremist rebellion that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country ungovernable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced dwindling resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued 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 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 characteristics of a long-term settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children signed up in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, security patrols guard the camp from the threat of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new duties with enthusiasm: 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 look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough resources or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we reuse 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 mostly unseasoned, save for a few beans.

“We’re still supplying school meals, staple provisions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most vulnerable while working tirelessly to acquire new funding through the expansion of our support network.”

The meals are funded by recent contributions 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 initiate self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can generate funds and boost their standard of living.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most needy 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 adequate, 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.”