Life for one hundred twenty thousand Asylum Seekers in Mauritania's Vast Refugee Camp on the Mali Frontier.

Many times 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 activity keeps the 84-year-old camp leader healthy in mind and body, and enables him to assess the welfare of other inhabitants.

His first stay in Mauritania occurred in 1991, when he left 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 social 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 particularly sorry for the younger residents of Mbera, which is situated 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 homeland [and] that is difficult because a refugee always has two hearts: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he hopes to go back to one day.”

First established as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to UNHCR. In furthermore, it is approximated that at least 154,000 refugees reside 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 settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, escaping a extremist rebellion that hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and has since left large parts of the country lawless. Aid workers – notably at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and nearby settlements – cannot stop being concerned. They have faced shrinking resources as foreign donors – most notably the now defunct USAID – have sharply reduced 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 budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the characteristics of a established settlement, including its own financial institution, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children registered in school. New entrants are registered by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

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

Some residents have adopted new duties with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and run an blaze control team putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network look after those injured by jihadist attacks and expectant mothers while also raising awareness about educating girls.

But the camp’s requirements are clear.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough financial support 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 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 mostly unseasoned, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still offering school meals, essential food aid, and cash assistance in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re focusing on the most at-risk while working tirelessly to acquire new funding through the broadening of our support network.”

The meals are supported by recent donations including several thousand tonnes of rice provided by the South Korean government – the only products in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping initiate business programmes to help refugees farm and keep animals so they can make money and improve their standard of living.

Though Malha manages everything dutifully, helping the aid workers’ assist the most vulnerable households, his heart aches 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 sufficient, 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 self-respect.”