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Many days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast 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 monitor the wellbeing of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg rebels fought with the army in his home Timbuktu area.

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 math and science teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the younger residents of Mbera, which is located 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 nation [and] that is heartbreaking because a refugee always has two hearts: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he dreams of returning to one day.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand huts, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In furthermore, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government representatives 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 co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country ungovernable. 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 worrying. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have drastically cut funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] support almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop 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 characteristics of a permanent settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children registered in school. New entrants are processed by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

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

Some residents have taken on new responsibilities with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and operate an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those wounded by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s requirements are evident.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough funding or equipment,” 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 gather 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, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most needy while working continuously to acquire new funding through the expansion of our funding sources.”

The meals are funded by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees grow crops and keep animals so they can make money and improve their standard of living.

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 rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is sufficient, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.

“We appreciate 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.”