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

His first stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg rebels battled with the army in his home Timbuktu area.

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

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

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have not once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their homeland [and] that is difficult because a refugee always has dual loyalties: 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 houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In also, it is estimated 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 number three human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business capitals.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a extremist rebellion that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country lawless. 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 dwindling 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 nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to halt vital nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” 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 shops, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children signed up in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, security patrols protect the camp from the threat of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new roles with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce 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 pregnant women while also promoting awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s needs are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough funding or supplies,” 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 cluster by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still supplying school meals, essential food aid, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most needy while working relentlessly to obtain new funding through the diversification of our donor base.”

The meals are powered by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only products in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start business programmes to help refugees cultivate and raise animals so they can generate funds and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha oversees everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ assist the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns 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 adequate, 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 self-respect.”