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Many days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys 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 mentally and physically fit, and allows him to check on the condition of other inhabitants.

His initial stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg rebels battled with the army in his home Timbuktu region.

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

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger people of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have not laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their homeland [and] that is heartbreaking 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 the UN refugee agency. In addition, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui area. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the number three human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, escaping a jihadist insurgency that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country lawless. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now ceased USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] assist almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop crucial nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to financial constraints,” 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 stores, and volleyball and football initiatives. 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 biometric systems.

Nearby, security patrols secure the camp from the risk of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and run an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be 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 funding or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle 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, essential food aid, and monetary aid 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 diversification of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent gifts 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 launch self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can generate funds and improve their standard of living.

Though Malha oversees everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most vulnerable households, his heart aches 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 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 self-respect.”