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Several mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and allows him to assess the condition 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 went 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 mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the young people 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 laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [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 dreams of returning to one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand huts, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In furthermore, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

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

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, fleeing a extremist rebellion that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country ungovernable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced dwindling resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] support almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue crucial 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 permanent settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 shops, and volleyball and football initiatives. 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 danger of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and run an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those wounded by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also spreading awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s requirements are evident.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough resources or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose 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 almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still supplying school meals, basic food distributions, and monetary aid 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 donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only products in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees farm and raise animals so they can generate funds and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha oversees 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 forfeit everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.

“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 self-respect.”