A child scrambles after chickens which dash into the coop to hide. Women sit under a leafless acacia tree and talk among themselves.
This idyllic life in Pache village, on the shoulder of Gulu town in northern Uganda, contrasts the rough life that Cecilia Lakicha has spent half her life - on the run and as "wife" of Joseph Kony.
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Emerging from a grass-thatched hut in her purple and blue-flowered dress, Lakicha looks much older than her 32 years.
But then, when one has spent 16 years in the bush, or captivity as she calls it, then it is easy to comprehend.
Like most Gulu residents, Lakicha vividly recalls her capture, and beginning of a life-long ordeal.
On July 7, 1989, she was a Form One student with the world at her feet. Then Kony's men struck Gulu High School and took with them three boys and 15 girls to start anew - a life with a difference.
The girl that the Lords Resistance Army rebels took away was a teenager; the person who returned last December was a mother of five, a woman who, judging from her looks, was settling into middle age.
Bush kingdom
This is the fate that awaits thousands of Uganda girls who have been abducted in the past 19 years, when the Lord's Resistance Army rebels started their attacks on villages in the districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader.
While most of them are trained how to fight, almost all of them end up as sex slaves of rebel leader Joseph Kony or his many commanders, raising their children in the bush, or in the villages once they are rescued, where they bear stigma for the rest of their lives.
It does not take long to recognise what years in Kony's bush kingdom have done to Lakicha: the heel of her foot is scarred from trekking, and her palms hard, there is something cold about her.
She cannot divulge certain details to journalists, she says from the onset, for security reasons.
Ugandan army men have advised her so, she says in lilting Acholi, although she also speaks a smattering of Kiswahili. Possibly, it is the fear of the unknown; having been abducted young, and introduced to a new life, Lakicha possibly feels guarded about revealing every grain of that past.
This, too, is understandable, especially if that past has been sordid or steeped in rituals and religious doctines best left in the past.
But Lakicha is happy to talk about her life with Kony, now 41, who took her in as his second wife in 1991.
"I was not afraid of him," she says of her first impressions. "Although I had heard many things before about him, he did not terrify me on that first meeting."
She was trained as a nurse, for nurses come in handy when soldiers limp "home" wounded.
"Our training was under a doctor, complete with an exam," she says.
That was between 1990 and 1991, when she was asked to join the evangelical ministry, where they would tour villages under LRA control.
"We would go about destroying totems and statues in churches, and also engaging in exorcism."
Like many facet's of Kony's "ideology," it is hard to understand the religious doctrine behind Kony's dislike for Christian symbols of worship. Nor why he warmed up to the Khartoum, an Islamist regime that was credited as the state sponsor of the LRA.
Perfect sense
But it made perfect sense to Lakicha: "He is a religious man. Very dynamic. God sent him to spread religion - encompassing all faiths."
Moreover, Lakicha says, the shift from caring for the injured to nourishing the people's spiritual life marked Kony's growing trust in her, which was crowned with her marriage to him.
How did it happen? Did he kneel down flashing a diamond ring and professed his love for her?
"First, I was transferred from Ojuok's (LRA rebel) command to work at Kony's home," she says. "Then he (Kony) asked me to be his second wife.
And how was it?
"No harassment, just harmony."
Lakicha says she was content with that life, and she never planned her escape. Other wives were equally accommodating, helping in work, cooking and looting expeditions.
By the end of last year, when Lakicha walked home to safety, she says Kony had 29 wives and 40 children.
"I ran away after two months, but those memories are still with me," says 13-year-old Tabitha Dorcas, who has also been given to a rebel commander as a wife.
Lakicha says although they lived in Uganda most of the time, they also lived in Sudan, for long periods in Lumbangatek and Nisitu.
Lakicha walked to freedom last December after she broke off from the rest of the pack following heavy fighting between rebels and government forces. "Life is never easy," she philosophises. "It is not better," she says of her present.
She aspires to return to her original home, which is not possible now as it is engulfed in fighting.
And would she accept Kony back? "As the father of my children, I can never run from that. If he returned home and asked to be taken in, and he lived as the loving husband that he is, why not?"
Of Kony's five children that Lakicha raised, one died, while the eldest, a 10-year-old boy, is in the bush. He brought along the other three, aged 6, 8 and 10 months.
"All along, I planned to return the children home as it was not safe in the battlefield," she says.
The images of Kony that lingers in Florence Adong's mind is that of an extremist, a harsh man who would brook no nonsense, especially from his wives.
"He would beat us up for laughing," she says, clearly relieved she does not have to ever deal with him again.
In the mother's quarters at the World Vision rehabilitation centre in Gulu, which is part of the larger Uganda Children of War project, Adong says Kony is an erratic man and a discriminative father.
"He might play with some of his children. But he hates the ugly ones and those who don't resemble him," she says.
Adong says there was a time Kony asked his security detail to round up his wives.
"He said he was going to kill them," she says, "Then he changed his mind and chased them away, before calling them back individually."
Kony also manifest his loyalties in the sharing of plundered booty, Adong says, adding that she always got the smallest portion.
"He said I was a quarrelsome woman, as stupid as my mother. This really hurt because my mother had just died."
If Adong detests Kony, her affection to his son, Akonyo Sande, is infectious.
"I love the baby," she says with a smile. "It wasn't out of choice but now I have the baby."
Adong clarifies some story that has been doing the rounds in Ugandan Press, about Kony running naked to escape a UPDF attack.
Early one morning, Kony was sitting outside in a blue shirt. He wanted to have a bath and water had been put in a trough.
"When a military plane was sighted, Kony removed the shirt as he said it could be detected from the air. He removed the shirt and ran bare-chested, as bombs were dropped by the plane. Many people were killed that day, including Kony's wife."
Both Adong and Lakicha believe in Kony's mystic powers, and that his prophecies came to pass.
"He said he knew some of us would escape, and in the many raids, this came to pass as many of the wives escaped," says Adong.
It is hard to establish the number of Kony's "wives," who comprise women of different ages abducted from homes, schools or other shelters.
Neither is it possible to assess how they all feel about him, and if the relationships are consensual.
If Adong and Lakicha are anything to go by, then there the most conclusive statement is that, in spite of everything, they counted on Kony for social security, which came in handy in the rough life in the camps.
Now they have to start life anew: bringing up Kony's children away from the battlefield, where they have to devise new ways to fend for themselves, and defend their honour in a very prejudiced world.
And if Kony's mission is to raise a new Acholi generation, having been "betrayed" by the older generation, then he is doing a very good job of it, fathering dozens of children every year.
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