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A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling 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 happened in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg rebels fought 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 forced him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is located 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 difficult 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.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In addition, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell 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 community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, running from a jihadist insurgency that hijacked 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 services the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced dwindling resources as foreign donors – most notably the now ceased USAID – have drastically cut 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 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 characteristics of a permanent settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 shops, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children signed up in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, police patrols secure the camp from the danger of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new responsibilities with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those wounded by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also spreading awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough resources or materials,” 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 sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few beans.

“We’re still supplying school meals, basic food distributions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most vulnerable while working relentlessly to obtain new funding through the broadening of our donor base.”

The meals are powered by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only products in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can make money and improve their quality of life.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ support 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 depend only on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is sufficient, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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.”