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Many days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator mentally and physically fit, and permits him to check on the wellbeing of other residents.

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

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

The former math and science teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the young residents of Mbera, which is positioned 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 homeland [and] that is heartbreaking because a refugee always has split affections: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he hopes to go back to one day.”

Originally planned as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. 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 hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive 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 – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced dwindling 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 nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue crucial nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the features of a permanent settlement, including its own financial institution, 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 registered in school. New entrants are documented by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols guard 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 blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those maimed by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also raising awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough funding or materials,” 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 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 mostly unseasoned, save for a few beans.

“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 focusing on the most vulnerable while working tirelessly to secure new funding through the broadening of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only goods in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees cultivate and raise animals so they can earn an income and boost their livelihood.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ support the most disadvantaged households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you forfeit everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is sufficient, 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.”