Uganda

Just a little about the place Winston Churchill called "the Pearl of Africa". A better and more complete discussion is available at Wikipedia and Lonely Planet, where I scored these maps.

Uganda is a country in east central Africa, crossing the equator and home to several of the most beautiful places on earth. It contains the famed source of Nile River that Stanley and Livingston unsuccessfully searched for, finally found by Speke in 1862.
It is also one of the last refuges of the mountain gorilla, made famous by the movie Gorillas in the Mist, a story about biologist Dian Fossey.

Uganda is a very poor country, still reeling from effects of the atrocities of the Amin era, a land torn apart from tribal warfare and mistrust. It has a very high instance of AIDS (4.2%), a high percentage of orphaned children and 35% of the population live below the poverty line.

Uganda is also a country of very friendly, hard working people who are trying desparately to rise above the conditions they find themselves in. Since the election of President Musaveni, conditions are beginning to improve. However, particularily in the north, there is a great deal of strife, mostly because of the conflict between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army of Joseph Kony.