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Many times 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 residence since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp elder mentally and physically fit, and enables him to check on the wellbeing of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg rebels battled with the army in his home Timbuktu region.

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

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is situated 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 country [and] that is difficult 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.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. 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 authorities say the area is the third largest human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping a jihadist insurgency that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the features of a established settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children registered in school. New comers are processed 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 duties with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and operate an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those wounded by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s demands are evident.

“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 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 cluster by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is largely basic, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most vulnerable while working tirelessly to obtain new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are supported by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can generate funds and improve their standard of living.

Though Malha oversees everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most needy households, his heart yearns 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 enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you endure hardship.

“We are grateful to 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.”