In September 2007, I travelled to northern Uganda to see a project run by the URCS and supported by the British Red Cross. Opimo village is a village in Lira district, northern Uganda, where after years of a brutal civil war, some people who were displaced in to IDP camps have begun returning to their homes as ongoing peace talks have brought some security to the region.
The URCS is working to assist those people who have returned to their villages such as Opimo, to rebuild their lives and regain their livelihoods. One way in which the URCS is doing this is to distribute seed and tool kits to families. This enables families to prepare their land, plant and harvest crops to feed themselves, sell produce at nearby markets and build up seed banks for future harvests.
In September 2007, floods swept across parts of northern Uganda, washing away bridges and roads and devastating farmland. Many crops were washed away or ruined. In Opimo village, although not as badly affected as other parts of the district, the rain fell hard and the waterlogged ground is causing farmers to fear that their harvest will fail. In 2007, WFP had been scaling down food distributions to returning communities but because of the floods, WFP is now having to scale up again to meet the growing demands for food assistance.
I met Lawrence, 28 years old, who lives in Opimo village and is married with one child. He received seeds and tools from the URCS, and was very happy with his harvest in the first half of 2007. He went on and prepared and planted in his land in time for the second harvest of the year. 
However, the heavy rains have brought him and his family concern: “There has been too much rain and this means I will have a very poor harvest.” Lawrence planned to keep some of his beans to plant for the next harvest, but due to the bad weather conditions he has been forced to plant all the bean seeds the URCS gave him in order to maximise what crops he can grow in his waterlogged fields.
The villagers plant their crops wherever they can around the village, with the vegetable gardens being closer to their homes. The waterlogged ground is causing major problems for the farmers, with many of the seeds growing too quickly. This means the crops die off without bearing fruit. With fears of a poor harvest, many people are resorting to planting all of their seeds that they had been keeping from the first harvest in order to maximise the possible crop production from their waterlogged fields.
Therefore if the harvest is as poor as predicted, many families will be reliant again on external food aid.
Despite the flooding and worries about their crops, the people of Opimo Village maintain they are happy to be back in their villages after years of conflict forced them and their families to live in the terrible conditions of the IDP camps. Villager, Ojok Moses, 31 years old and responsible for an extended family of 14 people, returned from the IDP camp to his village nearly one year ago. He said “Returning to my village was very important for me. When we lived in the camp I struggled to provide for my family, and this was a big problem for us. Now I am back I have a garden where I can grow vegetables and feed my children.” Lawrence agreed: “In the camp we were surviving day to day, now we can have a livelihood again.” Another villager, Alfred, put it simply: “No longer do we have to be running, security is better and life is good.”
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