News stories by Amy Fallon, page 2

KAMPALA, Jul 15 (IPS) - Olga Mugisa, 11-years-old, takes to the microphone in front of her peers, the Ugandan flag proudly draped behind her and green plants framing the stage. She has an important message to share with her fellow students: "If you cut one, plant two."

KIGALI, Jul 11 (IPS) - Every day, 14-year-old Deborah wakes up in an orphanage, goes to school, and comes home to an orphanage. It does not matter when or for how long she leaves the orphanage, she always knows she'll be back.

KIGALI, Jun 23 (IPS) - Before Rwanda's 1994 genocide, Salaam Uwamariya's husband, a professor, was the family breadwinner, providing for her and their eight children. Uwamariya sold vegetables at a nearby market to supplement their income.

KAMPALA, May 29 (IPS) - When Gerald Abila received an iPhone as a gift almost two years ago, the Ugandan law student didn't just use it to text his friends. He used it to create what would eventually become the first organisation of its kind in East Africa — a tech savvy, multi-award winning, not-for-profit organisation that uses Facebook, Twitter, SMSes, and radio and television partnerships to provide free legal advice and consultations.

KIGALI, May 14 (IPS) - Twenty-year-old Fabrice Shyaka sells popcorn in brown paper bags five nights a week from his stand in a small alleyway, situated next to a DVD shop blaring loud music, and a supermarket. Here in Kanombe, a suburb in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, he is the only person selling popcorn in the area.

KAMPALA, May 07 (IPS) - Every morning at six a.m. before he goes to school, and every night at six p.m. after he gets home from school, Emmanuel, 11, knows what he must do: take his antiretroviral pills.

KAMPALA, Apr 23 (IPS) - As she sits in a Kampala hotel holding a mobile phone that rings frequently, Sandra Ntebi tells IPS: "I'm really exhausted. I don't know where to start. We have many cases pending." Ntebi manages a hotline and is helping Uganda's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community find alternative, safe accommodation after they have faced harassment.

BUTARE, Rwanda, Apr 17 (IPS) - From all across Rwanda, and even from parts of neighbouring Burundi, people flock to the southern town of Butare to a little shop called Inzozi Nziza or Sweet Dreams. They come here for a taste of something of the unknown, something most have never tasted in their lives — the sweet, cold, velvety embrace of ice cream.

KAMPALA, Mar 31 (IPS) - On a Friday afternoon men wearing long kamis — long white traditional robes — climb the steps to Somcity Travel, a small family business and travel agency in Kisenyi slum, in Uganda's capital, Kampala. The agency boasts that they "fly all over the world" but to one destination in particular — Somalia.

KAMPALA, Mar 27 (IPS) - Dressed in a white dress with black polka dots and pink and red carnations, white knee-high socks and matching patent shoes, Babirye, recently celebrated her second birthday.