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Several times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp leader vigorous, and enables him to monitor the welfare of other occupants.

His initial stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg insurgents fought with the army in his native Timbuktu region.

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

The former math and science teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids 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.”

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

Government officials say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial 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 ungovernable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. 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] assist almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop vital 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 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols secure the camp from the threat of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and run an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those injured by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also spreading awareness about teaching 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 supplying school meals, basic food distributions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most needy while working tirelessly to secure new funding through the expansion of our support network.”

The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch business programmes to help refugees cultivate and rear animals so they can earn an income and improve their standard of living.

Though Malha manages everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ assist the most disadvantaged 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 depend only 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.”