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Many mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp leader mentally and physically fit, and allows him to monitor the wellbeing of other residents.

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

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

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is positioned 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 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 dreams of returning to one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui area. More than half are under 18.

Government officials say the area is the third-biggest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a jihadist insurgency that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country lawless. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop worrying. 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] assist almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop crucial nutrition programmes for malnourished children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the features of a permanent settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 shops, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are processed by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols guard the camp from the threat of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new responsibilities with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and manage an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those injured by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough funding 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 served 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 legumes.

“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 acquire new funding through the broadening of our funding sources.”

The meals are funded by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees cultivate and rear animals so they can generate funds and improve their standard of living.

Though Malha oversees everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most needy 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 rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you endure hardship.

“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 pride.”