Daily Existence for 120,000 Refugees in Mauritania's Extensive Refugee Camp on the Mali Frontier.

A number of days a week, Mohamed ‘Momo’ Ag Malha treks at least 7 miles (11km) around the enormous Mbera refugee camp in southeastern Mauritania that has been his residence since 2012. The exercise keeps the 84-year-old camp leader mentally and physically fit, and allows him to assess the condition of other inhabitants.

His first stay in Mauritania came 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 returned home and worked for a year as a social worker before transitioning to a teacher. Then in 2012, the Tuareg conflict once again compelled him across the border.

The former mathematics and physics teacher says he feels especially sad for the younger people of Mbera, which is positioned 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 two hearts: one here, where he lives, and another over there, in his homeland, which he dreams of returning to one day.”

First established as a few thousand dwellings, Mbera now hosts around 120,000 refugees, according to the UN refugee agency. In addition, it is calculated that at least 154,000 refugees dwell in nearby villages across the Hodh Ech Chargui province. More than half are under 18.

Government representatives say the area is the third-biggest human community in Mauritania after Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, the administrative and commercial hubs.

Each month, thousands more refugees arrive across the border, escaping a extremist rebellion that took over the Tuareg rebellion and has since left swathes of the country uncontrollable. Aid workers – especially at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef office in the town of Bassikounou, which supports the camp and nearby 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 discontinue 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 features of a permanent settlement, including its own bank, eight schools, a market with more than 500 outlets, and volleyball and football programmes. Members of a parent-teacher association use amplifiers to get more children signed up in school. New entrants are processed by aid workers and state agents using digital identification.

Nearby, security patrols guard the camp from the risk of armed groups just a few miles from the border.

Some residents have assumed new responsibilities with enthusiasm: volunteers in the SOS Desert organisation cultivate food for sale and operate an anti-fire brigade putting out bushfires; members of a women’s resource network support those injured by jihadist attacks and mothers-to-be while also spreading awareness about schooling girls.

But the camp’s needs are evident.

“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 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 sit by a big tray to eat the same meal every school day – rice that is almost plain, save for a few pulses.

“We’re still supplying school meals, basic food distributions, and financial support in the Mbera camp, but it’s not enough,” says Diongue. “We’re prioritizing the most vulnerable while working relentlessly to acquire 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 goods in a majority of the warehouses. A few donors are also helping start business programmes to help refugees grow crops and raise animals so they can make money and boost their livelihood.

Though Malha oversees everything responsibly, helping the aid workers’ cater to the most needy 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 endure hardship.

“We thank 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.”