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A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator vigorous, and permits him to check on the condition of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his native Timbuktu area.

After four years as a refugee, he returned home and worked for a year as a social worker before transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg conflict once again forced him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels especially sad 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 not laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [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 longs to revisit one day.”

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

Government authorities say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a extremist rebellion that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country ungovernable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced dwindling resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct 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 discontinue crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the features of a established settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children registered in school. New arrivals are processed by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, security patrols guard the camp from the risk of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new duties with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and run an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those maimed by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also spreading awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s requirements are obvious.

“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 requirements 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 cluster 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 supplying school meals, essential food aid, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most needy while working continuously to obtain new funding through the broadening of our donor base.”

The meals are funded by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can earn an income and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most needy 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 are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is enough, 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 pride.”