Women draw water in jerrycans from the Emugogol well in Abia village. Photograph: Guardian/Dan Chung
In almost every interview, you bump up against the same problem. "He is my second father," someone will say, or "she is my sister", "he is my brother", but when you press the point, it turns out that a second father is what we would understand to be an uncle, and sister can mean all kinds of family relation, from sister or cousin to "clan sister", who could be someone very distantly related, a cousin two or three times removed.
I tried to get it straight with Joseph, the wonderfully charismatic Amref driver and translator who comes from Katine and, as became increasingly clear, seemed to be related to everyone one way or another.
The point where it got really confusing was when Joseph and I were in a neighbouring district to Soroti, 15 miles away from Katine at Otuboi market.
An elegant woman and her equally elegant young daughter walked up to the jeep and greeted Joseph as "my son". I turned in astonishment to Joseph that he hadn't mentioned that his mother lived here. But Joseph laughed - as he is prone to doing at the peculiarities of the Guardian journalists he has now got to know - and patiently explained that anyone who has taught you is entitled to call you their son or daughter. This lady was his old school teacher.
This respect for learning doesn't just cover school, but anything, added Amref's water and sanitation officer, Anthony. It's a measure of the extraordinary respect awarded to knowledge and to the teaching of the young in Teso culture.
But Joseph's patient explanations got really hard to follow when we bumped into a wonderful young woman who had bought fish from Otuboi market and was taking them back to Atirir trading post in Katine to sell.
Joseph said she was his sister's daughter, but after a lot of diagrams on a notebook, we struggled through the cultural barrier and I could translate that as his uncle's granddaughter.
This usage of brother, sister, mother and father, is an indication of just how strong these extended family relationships can be - they have all the importance and intimacy we would ascribe to the nuclear family. When you run short, it is the extended family to whom you turn and they are expected to help. During the lean times of June and July, it is the extended family that keeps people from going hungry. They serve as the welfare state across much of Africa.
They are also critical for land ownership. A family owns land in common and, interestingly, when someone says they own 20 acres what they often mean is that their extended family owns 20 acres. All decisions about planting have to be determined by family consultation and the family elders and elected head of the family are highly respected as final arbiters of such decisions.
Marriages in Katine are often at an early age, such as 16 or 17. Adulthood comes even earlier for boys, who at 12 are expected to leave their mother's hut and build their own in preparation for marriage. They also need to start earning a living - perhaps a little trading if they are lucky enough to have a bicycle - so they can begin to save for the bride price for a wife. Girls are a valuable source of income for families because of the bride price.
Once married, the babies begin to arrive. Huge prestige is put upon having lots of children; as one Amref worker from the Teso region put it: "You're not a real man or a real woman unless you have lots of children. People begin to ask what you are doing if you don't keep producing children." He was one of 17 and he hoped to limit his own family to five.
Across Katine, large families are the norm; one man we interviewed had 20 children by two different wives. When we asked him their ages, he said he left that kind of thing to his wives. He didn't know.
Uganda has one of the highest population growth rates in the world, an average of 5.9 children per woman. It is one of the sources of contention between president Yoweri Museveni's government and western donors.
The latter point out that such population growth ensures that economic growth doesn't translate into better living standards, but Museveni sees regional power in a large population. Uganda has a land mass about the size of the UK with a third of its population.
Despite the glossy adverts in urban areas of one girl and one boy, such messages of limiting your family make little headway in Katine.
