“I can’t believe I am no longer living in an IDP camp in Pabbo although the bad memories are still there. It is a different life now where people are living freely in their villages.

Monica Atto was abducted by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as a child but escaped and now lives in a suburb of Gulu, northern Uganda, with her five children, eking out a living making paper beads.

“I left Padibe IDP camp last year on 1 November. I moved to my new home outside the camp where I was renting a room for my family. I bought the plot in 2007 for 1,600,000 Shillings [US$800]. I bought it for my children; it will help them when I die.

Stephen Mukasa, 23, a fisherman on East Africa’s Lake Victoria, is more terrified of drowning than he is of dying from an AIDS-related illness.

Eastern Uganda’s mountainous district of Kapchorwa has huge agricultural potential, but farmers perennially suffer crop losses due to vermin, poor or non-existent storage and drying facilities, and lack of transport, say officials.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has indicated he will not back a bill that would impose the death sentence for the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” – when an HIV-positive person has sex with anyone who is disabled or under the age of 18.

There is a joke among Africans about how colonialism began. A Christian missionary came with a Bible in hand, told our ancestors to bow their heads for a prayer, and when they opened their eyes their land was gone.

The lack of adequate sanitation facilities in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has led to increased use of polythene bags – known as “flying toilets” – for human waste disposal, local officials said.

This place stinks’; a graffiti in a Kampala public toilet curtly tells its story. But nature’s call is defiant, and so people simply ignore the warning.

Ten months after being re-launched, a new brand of female condom has proven popular among a test group of Ugandan women, according to a study.

Michael Okot, 63, left Gulu disctrict for Kampala 20 years ago to seek refuge from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgence in Northern Uganda. After his entire family was abducted and killed, Okot decided to flee and married another wife, who unfortunately, died after a short while.

Ethnic politics is raising tensions in Uganda as controversy over the legitimacy of the country’s Kingdoms and their control over land takes a violent dimension.