WASHINGTON (AP)- Lush but often perilous northern Uganda is a place most people would avoid, given that it has been the battleground for one of Africa's bloodiest conflicts.

For peace envoy Betty Bigombe, however, it is the focus of almost two decades' work trying to stop violence against her Acholi people.

For her, it is also home.

Bigombe has endured conditions that few other peace negotiators can imagine. She has put up with roach-infested tents and highway ambushes. On two occasions, vehicles traveling in front of hers were demolished by land mines. The combined casualty toll was eight dead and four wounded; some were children. She believes she was the target both times.

These days, her life is decidedly calmer. No longer Uganda's minister of state for pacification of northern Uganda, Bigombe, 52, is living in Washington. She is writing a book about her experiences from her base at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a U.S. government-financed think tank. At the same time, she remains immersed in her quest for a settlement in her homeland, delivering advice by e-mail and telephone to on-scene peace negotiators in southern Sudan where the negotiators are meeting.

"I think about it when I go to bed. I think about it when I wake up. When I wake up I'm on my computer. There are tons of e-mails," she said in a recent interview. There was some good news in mid-April: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government and the Lord's Resistance Army agreed to resume a truce that had expired and to restart peace talks.

Bigombe has been trying to get LRA rebels to end their brutal 21-year insurgency in the Portugal-sized region. Countless thousands have died, most of them innocent civilians; more than 1.5 million have been displaced from their homes and some 20,000 children, often as young as 10, have been abducted. The boys usually have served as LRA soldiers, the girls as sex slaves. Mutilation of innocents has been common.

The LRA is led by Joseph Kony, who claims to be waging war on God's direct orders. Bigombe said Kony cites Old Testament teachings in defending LRA atrocities. A left arm that sins must be cut off, and the lips of people who have said bad things must suffer the same fate, he has told Bigombe. Eyes that have seen what they should not must be plucked. She has met with Kony four times and on many more occasions has conferred with him by phone. Jan Egeland, who served as U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs until last December, has said the northern Uganda conflict is the world's most neglected humanitarian crisis. He contends the war has forced the people "to live in massive displaced persons camps that are not found anywhere in the world." Before Museveni appointed her as peacemaker in 1988, Bigombe lived in Kampala, Uganda's lakeside capital, far from northern Uganda, where she was born. She was a member of parliament, wife of a Ugandan diplomat and mother of a boy and a girl. Then she gave it all up, disappearing into the northern Uganda badlands. Parenting gave way to the pursuit of peace. She missed her children but said she used to tell herself, "At least they are getting food. At least they have shelter. At least they go to school."

Her first two years on the job, 1988-90, were the most difficult. Poisonous snakes were her biggest worry during her travels. To cross a river usually meant fashioning tiny rafts from sisal and bamboo. Just finding remote LRA base camps was a trying experience for Bigombe and her armed escorts. She said the LRA left markers in the thick jungle to guide them.

"It was always difficult to predict where exactly they were," she said. There were other problems, including gaining acceptance from all sides as a woman. "The first reaction from the rebels was, `We are very insulted. We told you Museveni does not want peace. How dare he send a girl,'" she said. Eventually, she said, she won them over.

Between 1988 and 1996, Bigombe spent full time on the search for peace, often visiting camps for the displaced. "Each time I went, it gave them so much hope. They smiled. It gave them life," she recalls.

The love of her fellow Acholi countrymen, the main victims of the LRA, kept her going, said John Prendergast, an Africa expert at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "She gets mobbed," he said, speaking of Bigombe's camp visits. "Someday there will be peace in Uganda. She's the flame that people have looked to in the hope that their situation is not permanent." He portrays her role as "pure sacrifice. ... She has sacrificed her entire career to this endeavor."

Peace seemed near in 1994, but talks broke down. In 1997, she enrolled at Harvard University, earned a master's degree, then worked on conflict resolution at the World Bank in Washington. Upon hearing of an LRA massacre in February 2004, she decided to return to the bush. She was instrumental in persuading Museveni's government to declare a unilateral cease-fire in 2005.