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Many times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp leader mentally and physically fit, and enables him to monitor the welfare of other occupants.

His initial stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg separatists clashed with the army in his home Timbuktu area.

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

The former math and science teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is positioned 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 country [and] that is heartbreaking because a refugee always has dual loyalties: 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 shelters, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In furthermore, it is approximated 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 number three human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, running from a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country lawless. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have drastically cut 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 halt crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the features of a long-term settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 shops, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children signed up in school. New arrivals are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols protect the camp from the threat of militants 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 operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those injured by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the determination, 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 needs 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 largely basic, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still offering 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 needy while working continuously to acquire new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are funded by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only goods in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees cultivate and raise animals so they can earn an income and enhance their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most needy households, his heart longs to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice 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 suffer.

“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.”