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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 home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp elder vigorous, and allows him to assess the welfare of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg rebels fought with the army in his native Timbuktu region.

After four years as a refugee, he returned home and worked for a year as a social worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg unrest once again compelled him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [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.”

First established as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. 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 authorities say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have severely slashed 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 crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to funding cuts,” 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 activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children registered in school. New arrivals are registered by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

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

Some residents have adopted new responsibilities with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and manage an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those wounded by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also spreading awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s demands 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 reuse what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands 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 almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still supplying school meals, basic food distributions, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most vulnerable while working relentlessly to acquire new funding through the broadening of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees cultivate and rear animals so they can generate funds and improve their livelihood.

Though Malha oversees everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most needy households, his heart longs 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 endure hardship.

“We are grateful to 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.”