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Several times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp elder mentally and physically fit, and enables him to monitor the wellbeing of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg insurgents battled with the army in his native Timbuktu region.

After four years as a refugee, he went 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 mathematics and physics teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the young residents of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their nation [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 hopes to go back to one day.”

First established as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In also, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government officials say the area is the third largest human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping a militant uprising that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country lawless. Aid workers – especially 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 declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have sharply reduced 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 discontinue vital nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a long-term 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 megaphones to get more children registered in school. New arrivals are documented by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, security patrols secure the camp from the danger of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new responsibilities with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those injured by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also promoting awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s needs 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 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 sit 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 offering school meals, basic food distributions, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most needy while working tirelessly to obtain new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start business programmes to help refugees grow crops and rear animals so they can make money and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha oversees everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ support the most needy 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 enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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 dignity.”