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Many 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 home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp leader vigorous, and allows him to assess the welfare of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania happened 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 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 especially sad for the young people of Mbera, which is located 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 nation [and] that is painful because a refugee always has dual loyalties: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he longs to revisit one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In furthermore, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the third-biggest human community 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 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 assists the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced shrinking 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 malnourished 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 financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children enrolled in school. New arrivals are registered by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols protect the camp from the danger of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new roles with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those maimed by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also spreading awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s demands are obvious.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough financial support or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the requirements 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 largely basic, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still supplying school meals, basic food distributions, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most needy while working continuously to obtain new funding through the broadening of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent gifts 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 initiate self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees farm and rear animals so they can make money and improve their livelihood.

Though Malha supervises everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most needy 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 enough, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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 pride.”