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A number of mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator vigorous, and allows him to check on the welfare of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his native Timbuktu area.

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 compelled him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger people 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 laid eyes on 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 longs to revisit one day.”

First established as a few thousand huts, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In furthermore, 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 authorities say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a extremist rebellion that hijacked 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 nearby settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced dwindling resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have drastically cut 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 malnourished children and mothers due to budget reductions,” 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 shops, and volleyball and football initiatives. 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 fingerprint technology.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols guard the camp from the danger of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new responsibilities with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and manage an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those wounded by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s demands are evident.

“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 needs 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 almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still providing school meals, staple provisions, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most needy while working continuously to obtain new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only goods in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees farm and rear animals so they can make money and enhance their standard of living.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, 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 rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is sufficient, 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.”