It's home bittersweet home for northern Uganda's returnees

0 Comments | AFP, April, 2008

APYETA (AFP) — Joseph Alana has returned to the village Uganda's civil war forced him to flee. The mango tree he planted years ago is one of the few things still standing and the task ahead is huge.

"I'm happy to be back home. I planted this mango tree many years back, I'm now enjoying the fruit of this tree," says the 67-year-old.

The war that raged for two decades between the government and the rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) drove him out of Apyeta, once a small village some 380 kilometres (230 miles) from the capital Kampala.

His wife and two of his children died of diseases in squalid camps for the displaced. His third son was abducted and forcibly enlisted in LRA ranks.

On the back of the cessation of hostilities signed in August...