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A number of times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp elder healthy in mind and body, and permits him to check on the welfare of other inhabitants.

His initial stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg separatists battled with the army in his home Timbuktu area.

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

The former mathematics and physics 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 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 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 accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In furthermore, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees live 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 settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping a militant uprising that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] support almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue vital 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 bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children registered in school. New entrants are documented by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, security patrols secure the camp from the danger of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new roles with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those injured by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s requirements are clear.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough funding or equipment,” 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 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 mostly unseasoned, save for a few beans.

“We’re still offering 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 obtain new funding through the expansion of our donor base.”

The meals are funded by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only items in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees cultivate and raise animals so they can generate funds and boost their livelihood.

Though Malha supervises everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns 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 sufficient, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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 pride.”