Described by Winston Churchill as "The Pearl of Africa", Uganda is a beautiful country situated in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa, which gained independence from the British Empire in 1962. Ugandans are a friendly and hospitable people who have weathered decades of oppresssive governance (notably under Idi Amin in the 1970s), and a protracted civil war caused by the LRA insurgency in northern Uganda (1985-2006). Uganda was one of the first African countries to make significant reversals in its rates of HIV infection and has made huge progress in the last two decades in combating HIV, building employment and economic growth, and providing universal primary education.
However, despite promising progress Uganda still faces considerable challenges. Ranked 143rd out of 169 countries on the UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI), with a GDP Per Capita of just $1,250 Uganda is still a predominantly poor country, and 51% of Ugandans live on less than $1.25 per day (both figures adjusted for purchasing-power-parity). Ugandans have an average life expectancy of just 54, with 15% under-nourished and an adult HIV/AIDS rate of 5.4%. Literacy is rising, but the national rate of 76% belies a huge educational discrepancy between Uganda's developed towns/cities and often neglected rural areas (Sources http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/ and http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/, accessed May 2011). Abuse of women and children; at home, at school, or when travelling on foot is shockingly high, especially among refugees and internally-displaced persons (IDPs). Access to justice is slow and expensive, and Transparency International's 2010 Index ranked Uganda 127th out of 177 countries for corruption alongside Nicaragua, Belarus and Syria (http://www.transparency.org/).
Uganda's capital city is Kampala (rectangle), on the northern shores of Lake Victoria, and boasts most of the facilities found in any national capital. The second largest town in Uganda is Gulu (triangle), in northern Uganda, which is now recovering from the LRA insurgency. Kasese (oval) is in western Uganda, and is a former mining town on the edge of the Rwenzori Mountains, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Kasese town is part of Kasese district, where the majority of families rely on subsistence farming. The town is close to Lake George and Queen Elizabeth National Park.
Uganda uses English as its official language, but this is only widely spoken amongst the well-educated. KiSwahili is the regional Lingua Franca for Eastern Africa, but again is not widely spoken throughout the country. Uganda has numerous tribes which each have their own language. In Kasese district, the predominant ethnic group is the Bakhongo, who speak Lukhongo.
