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Many mornings 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 home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and permits him to check on the wellbeing of other inhabitants.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he fled 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 community worker before transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg conflict once again forced him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young residents of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their homeland [and] that is difficult because a refugee always has split affections: 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 huts, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In furthermore, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government officials 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 pour in across the border, fleeing a extremist rebellion that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and adjacent 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 nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop crucial nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a permanent settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 shops, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children signed up in school. New comers are processed by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, security patrols protect 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 grow crops for sale and run an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also spreading awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough financial support or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle 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 almost plain, save for a few beans.

“We’re still supplying school meals, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most at-risk while working tirelessly to acquire new funding through the diversification of our funding sources.”

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 entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees farm and rear animals so they can generate funds and boost their quality of life.

Though Malha oversees everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ assist the most vulnerable households, his heart longs to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice 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 dignity.”