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Several days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp leader vigorous, and allows him to check on the wellbeing of other occupants.

His first stay in Mauritania came in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg insurgents 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 community worker before transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again pushed him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels particularly sorry for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is positioned 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 country [and] that is painful because a refugee always has split affections: 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 shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In also, 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 authorities say the area is the third-biggest human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping 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 services the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced declining 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 stop vital nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the characteristics of a long-term settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children registered in school. New arrivals are registered by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

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

Some residents have adopted new duties with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and operate an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those injured 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 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 cluster by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still providing school meals, essential food aid, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most at-risk while working tirelessly to secure new funding through the expansion 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 goods in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees cultivate and raise animals so they can generate funds and boost their livelihood.

Though Malha oversees everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ support the most needy 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 adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you endure hardship.

“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.”