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A number of mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys 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 leader vigorous, and allows him to monitor the welfare of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he left Mali as Tuareg rebels fought with the army in his home Timbuktu province.

After four years as a refugee, he came back and worked for a year as a social worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg conflict 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 located approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids 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 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 accommodates around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In also, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees reside in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government representatives say the area is the third largest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, fleeing a jihadist insurgency that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts 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 being concerned. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have sharply reduced funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue essential nutrition programmes for malnourished 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 outlets, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are registered by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols secure the camp from the threat of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new roles with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and run an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those wounded by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are clear.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough resources 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 provided 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 pulses.

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

The meals are supported by recent donations 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 entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees grow crops and keep animals so they can generate funds and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha manages everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ assist 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 adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you struggle.

“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 dignity.”