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Many times 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 dwelling since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator healthy in mind and body, and allows him to monitor the welfare of other residents.

His initial 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 returned home and worked for a year as a community worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg unrest once again compelled him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young residents of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones 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 huts, Mbera now hosts 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 officials say the area is the third largest human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and adjacent 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] 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 long-term settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children signed up in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

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

Some residents have adopted new roles with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and manage 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 raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough financial support or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose 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 largely basic, save for a few beans.

“We’re still providing school meals, basic food distributions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working relentlessly to obtain new funding through the broadening of our support network.”

The meals are powered by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only items in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees farm and rear animals so they can make money and improve their livelihood.

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

“When you leave your country, you lose 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 suffer.

“We are grateful to 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 pride.”