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A number of mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp coordinator vigorous, and permits him to monitor the condition of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg rebels battled with the army in his home Timbuktu region.

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

“Some of the children who were born here in Mbera have not laid eyes on Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is painful 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.”

Originally planned as a few thousand huts, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In also, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government officials 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, escaping a militant uprising that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country lawless. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced declining resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] assist almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to discontinue essential nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a established settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 shops, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children enrolled in school. New entrants are documented by aid workers and state agents using fingerprint technology.

Nearby, security patrols protect the camp from the risk of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new responsibilities with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those maimed by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also raising awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s needs are obvious.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough financial support or supplies,” 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 given 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 largely basic, save for a few beans.

“We’re still supplying 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 acquire new funding through the diversification of our funding sources.”

The meals are powered by recent donations 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 entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can earn an income and enhance their livelihood.

Though Malha manages everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most vulnerable households, his heart longs 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 enough, 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 self-respect.”