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

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his native Timbuktu province.

After four years as a refugee, he came back and worked for a year as a community worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again pushed him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger residents of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is difficult because a refugee always has two hearts: 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 also, it is calculated 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 administrative and commercial capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, running from a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop being concerned. 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 hungry 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 financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children registered in school. New comers are registered by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols guard the camp from the danger of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new roles with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and manage an firefighting unit 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 educating girls.

But the camp’s requirements are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough resources or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle what little we have, but it is not enough for the requirements 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 sit 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, essential food aid, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most needy while working tirelessly to acquire new funding through the expansion of our support network.”

The meals are powered by recent contributions 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 start entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can generate funds and improve their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ assist 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 are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, 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.”