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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 south-eastern Mauritania that has been his dwelling since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp leader vigorous, and permits him to assess the welfare of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg separatists clashed with the army in his native 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 compelled him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger people of Mbera, which is positioned approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the kids who were born here in Mbera have never even seen Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is heartbreaking because a refugee always has dual loyalties: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he longs to revisit one day.”

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

Government authorities 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 jihadist insurgency that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country ungovernable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and neighbouring settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. 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 halt vital nutrition programmes for malnourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

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

Nearby, gendarmerie patrols secure the camp from the risk of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new duties with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and operate an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those maimed by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also promoting awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s needs are evident.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough funding or materials,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we recycle what little we have, but it is not enough for the requirements 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 almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most needy while working continuously to obtain new funding through the diversification of our support network.”

The meals are powered by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees farm and rear animals so they can earn an income and improve their livelihood.

Though Malha supervises everything responsibly, 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 depend only on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.

“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 dignity.”