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Several mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp leader vigorous, and permits him to monitor the wellbeing of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he fled Mali as Tuareg separatists fought with the army in his native Timbuktu region.

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 fighting once again compelled him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels deeply sympathetic for the younger people of Mbera, which is situated approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have never even seen 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 longs to revisit one day.”

Originally planned as a few thousand huts, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees live in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government officials say the area is the third largest human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees pour in across the border, running from a jihadist insurgency that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country lawless. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now ceased USAID – have sharply reduced 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 undernourished 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 financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 stores, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers 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 militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have adopted new roles with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and manage an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those wounded by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s requirements are obvious.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough financial support or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the demands 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 almost plain, save for a few beans.

“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 concentrating on the most at-risk while working tirelessly to secure new funding through the diversification of our support network.”

The meals are supported by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only items in a bulk of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees farm and rear animals so they can earn an income and boost their quality of life.

Though Malha oversees everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ cater to 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 endure hardship.

“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.”