(CNN) -- The two young women were as different as could be when they met in a small farming village outside Uganda's capital in 2004. 

Orphans perform at the opening ceremony for their new home in Mutungo, Uganda. 

Brittany Merrill was a 19-year-old Southern Methodist University broadcast journalism student from an affluent family in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. 

She was teaching literature in Uganda for the summer when she decided to visit Mutungo, a crowded shantytown of mud huts and wooden shacks, where children in torn clothes ran around in bare feet, and people lingered in the noisy streets to avoid the oppressive heat inside their homes. 

At 22 years old, Sarah Kamara felt God had called on her to take in homeless children begging on Mutungo's streets. In addition to her own daughter, Kamara was caring for 23 children in her one-room home. Some were AIDS orphans, others had been abandoned by families who had too many children. 

But Kamara took them in, alienating herself from neighbors, relatives and her husband, who briefly separated from her in protest. 

Despite Kamara's broken English and Merrill's culture shock, the two found common ground in their compassion for the children, whose zeal for life was unmitigated by the poverty, disease and death that had brought them to Kamara's home. 

"They taught me about what is meaningful in this world and gave me purpose," Merrill said of the children. "Their love and faith has challenged my heart. They shook me out of my complacency." 

Merrill left Uganda determined to help Kamara realize her dream of opening a full-fledged orphan home, where sets of "mamas" and "uncles" would care for children in separate living spaces, nurturing their emotional, physical and spiritual needs. 
What is the country mentioned in the article?
Uganda