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Several 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 home since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp leader mentally and physically fit, and enables him to check on the condition of other occupants.

His initial stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his native Timbuktu province.

After four years as a refugee, he came back and worked for a year as a community 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 deeply sympathetic for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their homeland [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 dreams of returning to one day.”

First established as a few thousand huts, Mbera now accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In addition, it is approximated 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 number three human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left extensive areas of the country lawless. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced dwindling resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have sharply reduced funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] support almost 90,000 people with both nutritional aid or money every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop crucial nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to funding cuts,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a permanent settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children registered in school. New comers are documented by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

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

Some residents have assumed new duties with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and run an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those wounded by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also raising awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s needs are evident.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough financial support or supplies,” 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 given one meal daily by WFP. At one school with 100 children per class, six or seven of them sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few legumes.

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

The meals are funded by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only products in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch business programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can generate funds and boost their livelihood.

Though Malha supervises everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ cater to 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 sufficient, 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.”