Life for one hundred twenty thousand Displaced People in the Vast Mbera Camp on the Malians Frontier.

Many mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha journeys at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania that has been his home since 2012. The routine keeps the 84-year-old camp leader healthy in mind and body, and enables him to assess the condition of other residents.

His first stay in Mauritania happened in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg insurgents fought 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 transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again pushed him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels particularly sorry 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 once visited Mali,” he says. “They do not know their country [and] that is heartbreaking 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 shelters, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In also, it is estimated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government authorities say the area is the third-biggest human encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a jihadist insurgency that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – particularly at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop worrying. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now discontinued USAID – have severely slashed funding this year.

“We’ve gone from [being able to] help almost 90,000 people with both provisions or financial assistance every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop vital nutrition programmes for undernourished children and mothers due to financial constraints,” 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 shops, and volleyball and football activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use loudspeakers to get more children registered in school. New comers are processed by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, police patrols protect the camp from the risk of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new duties with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and run an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those injured by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also promoting awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s demands are clear.

“We have the will, we have the women, but not enough resources or equipment,” 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 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 largely basic, save for a few beans.

“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and monetary aid in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most needy while working tirelessly to secure new funding through the broadening of our funding sources.”

The meals are supported by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only items in a most of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees grow crops and rear animals so they can earn an income and boost their standard of living.

Though Malha manages everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most vulnerable households, his heart longs to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you lose everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you are entirely reliant on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is adequate, sometimes it is not. And when it is not, you suffer.

“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.”