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A number of times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and allows him to monitor the wellbeing of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg rebels clashed with the army in his home Timbuktu province.

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

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger inhabitants of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is difficult 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 huts, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government representatives say the area is the third-biggest human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping a jihadist insurgency that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country lawless. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have sharply reduced funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue essential nutrition programmes for malnourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

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

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols secure the camp from the danger of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new roles with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those injured by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s demands are evident.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough financial support or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we reuse what little we have, but it is not enough for the needs of the camp.”

In the schools, the children are given 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 providing school meals, essential food aid, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most vulnerable while working continuously to obtain new funding through the diversification of our funding sources.”

The meals are supported by recent contributions 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 entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can earn an income and boost their standard of living.

Though Malha manages everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most disadvantaged 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 endure hardship.

“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.”