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Several times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp leader healthy in mind and body, and permits him to check on the condition of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg insurgents clashed with the army in his home 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 fighting once again compelled him across the border.

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

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have not laid eyes on 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.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In also, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government representatives say the area is the third-biggest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, running from a extremist rebellion that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes 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 adjacent settlements – cannot stop worrying. 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 food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the characteristics of a permanent 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 loudspeakers to get more children registered in school. New entrants are documented by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

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

Some residents have adopted new roles with enthusiasm: 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 promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough resources or supplies,” 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 cluster by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few legumes.

“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 prioritizing the most vulnerable while working continuously to acquire new funding through the expansion of our support network.”

The meals are supported 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 launch entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees grow crops and keep animals so they can make money and enhance their standard of living.

Though Malha supervises everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most vulnerable 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 endure hardship.

“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 self-respect.”