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A number of times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks 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 coordinator vigorous, and permits him to monitor the condition of other occupants.

His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg insurgents clashed with the army in his home Timbuktu province.

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

The former math and science teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the young people of Mbera, which is positioned 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 painful because a refugee always has split affections: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he hopes to go back 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 approximated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell 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 settlement 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 took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas 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 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] support almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue essential nutrition programmes for malnourished children and mothers due to funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the characteristics of a permanent 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 amplifiers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are processed by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

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

Some residents have assumed new duties with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and operate an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those injured by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s requirements are evident.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough resources or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle 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 gather 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 cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working relentlessly to obtain new funding through the diversification of our donor base.”

The meals are supported by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only products in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can generate funds and improve their livelihood.

Though Malha supervises everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ assist the most needy households, his heart aches to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you forfeit everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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 dignity.”