Everyday Reality for 120,000 Displaced People in the Massive Shelter on the Malians Frontier.

A number of times a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha walks at least 7 miles (11km) around the sprawling Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp leader healthy in mind and body, and allows him to monitor the condition of other residents.

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

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 conflict once again forced him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the young inhabitants of Mbera, which is positioned approximately 30 miles from the Malian border.

“Some of the young ones who were born here in Mbera have not once visited 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 hopes to go back to one day.”

Originally planned as a few thousand huts, Mbera now houses around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In furthermore, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui region. More than half are under 18.

Government representatives say the area is the third largest human settlement in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the governmental and business centers.

Each month, thousands more refugees come across the border, fleeing a militant uprising that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country lawless. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which assists the camp and adjacent settlements – cannot stop worrying. 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] support almost 90,000 people with both food or cash every month to about 53,000 … and had to stop essential nutrition programmes for hungry children and mothers due to budget reductions,” says Aliou Diongue, country director for WFP.

The camp has many of the trappings of a long-term settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football initiatives. Members of a parent-teacher association use megaphones to get more children enrolled in school. New comers are registered by aid workers and state agents using biometric systems.

Nearby, police patrols protect the camp from the danger of fighters just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have taken on new duties with gusto: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation farm produce for sale and manage an firefighting unit putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network care for those injured by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also raising awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s demands are clear.

“We have the determination, we have the women, but not enough funding or equipment,” a leading member of the network says. “Sometimes we reuse 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 almost plain, save for a few legumes.

“We’re still providing school meals, basic food distributions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re concentrating on the most needy while working continuously to secure new funding through the diversification of our donor base.”

The meals are supported by recent gifts including several thousand tonnes of rice supplied by the South Korean government – the only items in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping launch self-sufficiency programmes to help refugees cultivate and rear animals so they can generate funds and improve their quality of life.

Though Malha supervises everything conscientiously, helping the aid workers’ assist the most disadvantaged 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 enough, 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 dignity.”