At her 'Home of Hope', Edith Lukabwe cares for children abandoned by their families.
Jinja District, Uganda - On a muddy, uneven and unnamed road on the outskirts of the eastern city of Jinja, children laugh and play in a compound surrounded by green hills and sugarcane plantations.
A child hurtles his wheelchair down the driveway at breakneck speed towards a heavy gate manned by a friendly security guard. On the worn concrete veranda, a young boy with hydrocephalus - a condition in which fluid enlarges the skull - laughs loudly as he plays checkers with two friends.
The cheerful atmosphere belies the difficult backgrounds of the 98 children - aged six months to 18 years - who live on the compound. All were abandoned. Most were babies when their parents left them. Some were left at the compound gate, others at hospital after they were born while one three-year-old boy was rescued from his home days after his parents disappeared.
Today, more than six million people in Uganda, a country of nearly 50 million, live with a disability. Many consider disability to be a burden due to a long-held cultural belief that it is a curse.
