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A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator vigorous, and allows him to assess the wellbeing of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg rebels battled with the army in his native Timbuktu province.

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 conflict once again compelled him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger 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.”

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

Government officials say the area is the third-biggest human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, running from a militant uprising that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have sharply reduced funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt essential nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” 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 stores, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children enrolled in school. New arrivals are registered by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, police patrols secure 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 maimed by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also raising awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s needs are evident.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough resources or supplies,” 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 given 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 largely basic, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most at-risk while working relentlessly to obtain new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are funded by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only products in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees cultivate and rear animals so they can generate funds and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, 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 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 dignity.”