Lilly Aloyo, 54, a resident of Lagut village, Lagut subcounty Padar district remembers the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency with solemn recollection.

The gunmen captured her whole family, and later murdered her youngest child because they thought it was taking away her attention from the cooking tasks she had been given.

A few days later, her husband was also murdered. Troubled and defiant, she was beaten to a pulp.

“Government soldiers found me unconscious, and took me to an internally displaced persons camp. That is where I lived until the war ended,” Aloyo shares, adding that throughout the period, the scenes never left her mind.

For most adult women, war captivity meant loss of their most productive lives. In the displacement camps where they sought refuge, there was no means of livelihood. Yet when they returned back to their community in the post war reintegration, most found it hard to start life over.

War-affected and formerly abducted women and men in northern Uganda have been associated with high levels of severe mental health consequences of the trauma-spectrum disorders.

When Aloyo and many other returnee women reached their communities, they slid into alcoholism to cope with the trauma.

“I resorted to alcoholism because it was the only way that I thought I could forget the pain that I experienced at that time. Every time I remembered what happened I had to look at alcohol,” Aloyo said.

In a 2015 research by the Mental and Psychiatry Department of Gulu University and Makerere University, it was discovered that people from the Northern region were twice more likely to abuse substances than those from Central Uganda.

However, there is no statistical representation on the impact of mental disorders on women who are believed to be key pillars and breadwinners in most households according to Joyce Laker,a trauma therapist at Gulu Referral hospital.

“Our societies are run by mothers. They are the bread winners. This means that if their lives are affected in a certain way, the community will be shaken and it's why you find that challenges like malnutrition in children, hunger and famine are quite high across the region,” she says.

Aloyo’s story is not an isolated case. Her friend Laker Harriet, a mother of two, said she was taken captive and sexually abused by the rebels. On return to the community, she was stigmatized.

Lilly Aloyo (right center behind the basin) with war survivors

“I was referred to as “Olum-Olum,” a term they used to refer to all women that were sexually harassed by the rebels. This forced me to drink alcohol, I abandoned my family and children turned into community outlaws,” Laker shares.

Most of the returnees, for fear of stigmatization fled the community for Gulu city to find a means of livelihood. Those who remained, the drinking joint was the only place for union and solace.

“We identified ourselves in these groups and we connected because our challenges were related. We started to think of what more we could do. We would meet more oftenly to share our challenges,” Lilly explains, noting that they resorted to counseling each other.

The women formed a 25 member group to pick each other up against alcoholism according to their leader Hariet Hariet Lakwang.

“We came together as the women in this community to do communal cultivation, in order to boast our own livelihood and economic status.”

They talked to chiefs of communal land, to get access, where they would cultivate jointly and produce sim-sim, sorghum and other cash crops to get by and take care of the family's needs.

“We then learned of a non-profit organization that was offering mental health support to victims of war. That’s how we were enrolled,” she shares.

The organization is TPO Uganda, a local-based NGO that works to rehabilitate victims of war. Through its programs, it supports victims to overcome the war trauma through psychological and physical rehabilitation, peace building tactics and supporting their livelihood development, according to Akmango Atim, the Project Manager.

“As an organization, we only offer professional support, these women do the rest of the work to recover from these Post war effects,” Atim noted.

The women meet to discuss different ways on how to overcome the social challenges they face. This is so because the challenges are related. They also farm together as as a form of therapy.

Through communal cultivation, they are able to use the accessed land to grow different crops, food and cash crops, to raise food to feed their families but also raise capital to start up different businesses.

“We don’t only cultivate; we also discuss the different ways on how to overcome the challenges that we face as women in this community. This is the only way we have overcome alcoholism, which to us was the only solution to the war trauma and memories that were haunting us on a daily basis.” One of the survivors noted.

According to Laker, the current chairperson of the group, T.P.O has offered professional advice, support and also equipped them with life changing skills. They are able to raise capital for each of the group members from the sales of the product.

“T.P.O has trained us in different ways on how to come up with business ideas, plans and ways to run the set businesses which has enabled us to boost our standards of living. I was able to start up a shop in our trading center which has transformed my life so much. “ Margret said.

According to Lilly the income she will receive from this seasons’ produce, will be used as capital to add in her piggery business which has been a very significant boost to her economic status. She has also been able to support her family, educate her children, cloth them and give them a good life.

Other parts of the region have also been able to adopt such innovations with support from T.P.O thus enabling them to grow economically and transform to better.

According to Atim, the biggest challenge TPO faces is the overwhelming numbers of the groups being formed and the number of people being registered into these life-changing groups.

“The drugs and mental health treatment that we subject these women to is very expensive. We are overwhelmed by the numbers and we are unable to care for all of them adequately,” Atim says.

The cultural norms that deny the women a right to freely access land without the influence of the husband has left them with slow progress since most of them are single mothers that lost their husbands to the war.

This explains the reason for formation of the group which gives them a joint voice to use to demand for land.