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A number of mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator healthy in mind and body, and allows him to monitor the welfare of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg rebels fought with the army in his native Timbuktu province.

After four years as a refugee, he returned home and worked for a year as a social 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 deeply sympathetic for the younger people of Mbera, which is located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have not laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their homeland [and] that is heartbreaking because a refugee always has split affections: 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 shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In addition, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. 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 capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a extremist rebellion that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now ceased USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

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

The camp has many of the characteristics of a long-term settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children registered in school. New arrivals are processed by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

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

Some residents have assumed new responsibilities with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and manage an firefighting unit 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 schooling girls.

But the camp’s requirements are clear.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough financial support or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle 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 gather by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is almost plain, save for a few beans.

“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most needy while working tirelessly to obtain new funding through the broadening of our funding sources.”

The meals are supported by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only goods in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees cultivate and keep animals so they can make money and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha supervises everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ assist the most vulnerable households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you lose everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you depend only 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 dignity.”