'We don't need men': Widows and rebel wives rebuild war-scarred Uganda

At the entrance to a round mud and elephant-grass hut in rural northern Uganda, Rose Lamwaka, 58, pauses and looks up at the ceiling of her new dwelling as if she cannot quite believe it is really there.

After her old home was burned down in a fire, a group of 15 local women built Lamwaka a new house on land lent to her by an uncle - a feat almost unheard of a generation ago before the conflict here, when men were the undisputed household heads.