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A number of days 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 home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator vigorous, and permits him to monitor the wellbeing of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg rebels clashed with the army in his native Timbuktu area.

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

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

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have never even seen 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 dreams of returning to one day.”

Originally planned as a few thousand huts, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In also, 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 representatives say the area is the number three human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country ungovernable. 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 being concerned. 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 nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue essential nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a permanent settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football activities. 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 digital identification.

Nearby, police patrols protect the camp from the threat of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new duties with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and manage an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those injured by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are evident.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough financial support or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we reuse what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands 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 almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still supplying 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 obtain new funding through the diversification of our support network.”

The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice donated 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 grow crops and rear animals so they can generate funds and improve their livelihood.

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

“When you leave your country, you forfeit everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you depend only on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you endure hardship.

“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.”