Every parent I talk to here in eastern Congo is struggling to feed their family.

Many children are malnourished. Babies have bleached hair caused by malnutrition. A large family of seven is surviving on a handful of sweet potatoes and assistance provided by aid agencies. A young girl has the skin of an old woman.

While no two rescues are exactly alike, this particular trip into the bush has a lot in common with previous operations. I got word of an LRA attack on a village along the road to Pageri about twenty miles away, an hour's drive along the rutted dirt road through the bush from Nimule. After so many years of fighting, large numbers of people who used to live in the countryside have moved closer to Nimule for protection or they've picked up stakes and left the area entirely. As you drive east and north along the road, you can see the population gradually thinning out. Close to town there are plenty of people on the road walking or riding bicycles. The farther from town you drive, the fewer people there are.