KITGUM, 4 December 2008 (IRIN) - Home is a very important idea for us Acholi. It isn't just somewhere you grow up, it isn't just the place where you're living - it's the place where all your ancestors are buried.

I was actually born in Kitgum town because my father was working there as a teacher and I didn't visit the village until I was seven but that didn't stop me knowing that the village was 'home'.

I'd hear all the stories from my parents about Loi Bide. It means 'Let them talk, people will get tired'. Just two words in Acholi - it's a very efficient language.

Visitors would come carrying fruit from the village and lots of milk. But whatever people brought would never be enough and I wanted to take all the food from the source.

It didn't disappoint. We had cattle, we had land and it was so fertile. We'd never go hungry. We had one of the big houses in the village and we had so many relatives around so I was never lonely. Now many of them have died, with the war, illness.

Those who have died recently we haven't been able to bury at home. But most of my relatives are buried there.

Some people will bury [their dead] under a tree but we buried ours in the compound, next to the huts. You feel their presence. We believe that the spirits are still alive.

Every year in November we would have a prayer for the ancestors. My sisters come all the way up from Jinja and Kampala. It's called nipo - 'remembrance' in Acholi.

We prepare lots of food, slaughtering cows and chickens.

The small children might not know who their ancestors are, they might not know their history but on that day all the children learn and find out just who their grandfather is, where they come from.

My nickname is Amot, the same as my grandmother, and that is what my family know me as. One day when my grandmother was old she pulled me to her and said that I should carry her name. It was a real honour for me because we were very close. It's very sad that I have been kept away from her and my other ancestors because of the war.

We haven't been able to do nipo for a long time - five years. Now this year I hope that we can all get together again. If there is still peace we will have a really big feast.

======================

RETURN

The village is close enough, just 1.5km away, and so I've been going to dig again since April but I haven't moved back. Not many people have.

Some have built small huts on their land - they have one leg in the camp and the other in the village. The grass won't be good to build huts until October and November, by which time we hope there will be some change with the peace talks in Juba.

For now people are still very fearful. In my village there are only two people out of perhaps 800 that have gone back.

People won't really believe in the peace until they see [LRA leader Joseph] Kony and [deputy Vincent] Otti return. You have to understand what people have been through, why they are still so suspicious of the peace process.

======================

How I came to Padibe

We came late to the camp. We saw others were leaving but we weren't interested in coming, we hadn't experienced trouble. But when others left the rebels started to cause trouble for us, stealing our crops. And then one day we saw our neighbour, a boy of 14, running as fast as he could and we knew something was very wrong.

We started to run but we were too slow, by then it was too late. They surrounded us and forced us down on the ground at gunpoint.

They took my eldest brother Milton along with two of my cousins. My brother came back but they killed one of my cousins - he couldn't carry the heavy load they gave him and he was beaten so seriously that he didn't even reach [South] Sudan.

After that we decided to come to the camp but for those who came late there was no space and so we stayed near the road. The landowner wouldn't even let us put up a hut.

We stayed like that on the grass for the months before the Red Cross lent us a tent.

It was very difficult. We just had nothing. Nothing to live under, nothing to cook with. Nothing. But we couldn't risk going back home.

Sometimes we'd eat just once in two days. There was no food and there was no laughter. You'd just sit and look at each other.

You couldn't sleep properly because you'd hear the bombs and the guns going off.

The soldiers were still very few - not enough to protect us. So we'd often go and run from the camp and sleep in the bush.

And if they got you they would cut off your ears, your mouth or arms so people started moving again all the way into the town.

But in the town there was no water, no shelter, no food. So we started to move back again - at least you could eat the pawpaw from the tree and the World Food Programme started to register people.

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org

IRIN news