Life for one hundred twenty thousand Refugees in Mauritania's Vast Mbera Camp on the Mali Frontier.

A number of mornings a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the vast Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The activity keeps the 84-year-old camp elder healthy in mind and body, and permits him to assess the wellbeing of other residents.

His initial stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he escaped Mali as Tuareg insurgents fought with the army in his native Timbuktu province.

After four years as a refugee, he came back and worked for a year as a community worker before becoming a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg fighting once again forced him across the border.

The former math and science teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger people of Mbera, which is situated 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 homeland [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.”

Initially conceived as a few thousand shelters, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In addition, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees reside 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 encampment in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a militant uprising that co-opted the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which services the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop feeling anxious. They have faced dwindling 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 stop vital nutrition programmes for malnourished children and mothers due to funding cuts,” 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 activities. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children signed up in school. New arrivals are processed by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, police patrols secure the camp from the danger of militants just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new responsibilities with zeal: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation grow crops for sale and operate an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those wounded by jihadist attacks and pregnant women while also raising awareness about teaching girls.

But the camp’s demands are evident.

“We have the desire, we have the women, but not enough funding or supplies,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we repurpose what little we have, but it is not enough for the needs 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 gather by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is mostly unseasoned, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still offering school meals, staple provisions, and cash assistance 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 supported by recent contributions including several thousand tonnes of rice donated by the South Korean government – the only goods in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start entrepreneurship programmes to help refugees cultivate and keep animals so they can generate funds and enhance their quality of life.

Though Malha supervises everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most vulnerable households, his heart yearns to return to Mali.

“When you leave your country, you sacrifice everything – your work, your home, your family sometimes,” he says. “Here, you rely solely on humanitarian aid. Sometimes that aid is sufficient, 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.”