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Several days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp elder vigorous, and allows him to assess the welfare of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg rebels clashed with the army in his home Timbuktu area.

After four years as a refugee, he came back and worked for a year as a social 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 younger people of Mbera, which is positioned 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 nation [and] that is heartbreaking 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.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In furthermore, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. 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 pour in across the border, escaping a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country ungovernable. 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 being concerned. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have sharply reduced 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 stop essential nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the characteristics of a established settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children registered in school. New arrivals are processed by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, security patrols guard the camp from the threat of fighters just a few miles from the border.

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

But the camp’s needs are evident.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough funding 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 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 beans.

“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 focusing on the most needy while working relentlessly to acquire new funding through the broadening 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 items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start business programmes to help refugees grow crops and keep animals so they can make money and improve their quality of life.

Though Malha oversees everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most disadvantaged 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 are entirely reliant 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 pride.”