Monica Atto, 24, was abducted by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) as a child but escaped and now lives with her children in a rehabilitation centre in Gulu, northern Uganda. Her diary begins on July 10...

These days with the peace talks things have changed. There is no more captivity. There is no more abduction. People are at rest and we aren’t having so many funerals. But the peace talks have kept many of the children in the bush and we don’t hear about them coming back any more. Now they are all up in [Democratic Republic of ] Congo, people are not escaping any longer.

There is no one particularly I would like to see but I feel for them all having that hard life up there. I was there for 10 years myself but my life is much better now I’m back. I live with my four children at the Child Protection Unit here in Gulu, along with some other returnees, and I can go and sell vegetables down at the market, do what I need to get by.

Before I went to the bush I was living in Palabek, a camp in Kitgum district, with my mother and brothers and sisters. I was 13 when I was taken. By that time I was really the mother of the family. My mother had fallen ill with a disease that cracked her hands and legs. She couldn’t walk and had to crawl so I became the mother when I was eight years old. That’s the way it was.

The LRA had collaborators and one was a neighbour. He led them to where the children were and so one night they came for us. They came at 10 in the evening when we were asleep. By the time I woke up they were already inside and one guy took off his bag and handed it to me to carry. My mother was shouting, pleading, saying she wasn’t well and needed me but they wouldn’t listen. They took a stick and started caning her. I said to her, let me go and as long as there is still life we will meet again. And if they kill me the young ones will grow up and support you. I was worried that they would kill her if she protested any longer.

After I escaped in 2004 I went back and found that everyone had been killed by the rebels. My father had good land up there and if peace comes I could perhaps go back, lots of people are, but who’d take care of me up there? If I was living there it would just be a constant reminder of all the people I’ve lost. I’d be so empty, so lonely. My brother is still with the rebels and if he was released and came back things could be different. Perhaps we’d both go back together.

Things were difficult when I went back. Because I was a returnee my uncle expected that I’d had lots of help from NGOs and was wanting things from me but I didn’t have anything to give. With four children to look after, what would I have to take?

But these days I have too much fear that it would be too lonely. So I’ll stay here in Gulu, this is where my life is now.

What were the aims [of the Lord’s Resistance Army]? The main aim was to take over the government but it was impossible. Children were dying; we were all dying for no reason. We were only taken to be killed, no higher purpose than that. I never saw it as a fight for justice.