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Several times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and permits him to assess the wellbeing of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg insurgents fought with the army in his native Timbuktu region.

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 unrest once again pushed him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is situated 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 homeland [and] that is painful because a refugee always has two hearts: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he longs to revisit one day.”

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

Government authorities say the area is the third-biggest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, running from a jihadist insurgency that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] assist almost 90,000 people with both nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop essential nutrition programmes for malnourished children and mothers due to funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a established settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children enrolled in school. New arrivals are processed by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols protect the camp from the risk of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new roles with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and manage an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those injured by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also spreading awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough funding or materials,” 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 served 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 mostly unseasoned, save for a few legumes.

“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 prioritizing the most at-risk while working continuously to obtain new funding through the diversification of our donor base.”

The meals are supported by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees cultivate and raise animals so they can make money and boost their standard of living.

Though Malha oversees everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ support the most disadvantaged households, his heart aches 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 suffer.

“We thank 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.”