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Several 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 residence since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and allows him to check on the condition of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his home Timbuktu province.

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 fighting once again compelled him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger people of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [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 hopes to go back to one day.”

First established as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In also, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the number three human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, running from a extremist rebellion that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts 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 worrying. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have sharply reduced funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both nutritional aid or money 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 long-term 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 amplifiers to get more children registered in school. New arrivals are documented by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

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

Some residents have taken on new duties with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce 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 raising awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough financial support or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose 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 sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is almost plain, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still offering school meals, essential food aid, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most vulnerable while working relentlessly to secure new funding through the broadening of our donor base.”

The meals are supported by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only products in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees cultivate and keep animals so they can generate funds and enhance their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most disadvantaged 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 enough, 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 self-respect.”