My week: Francis Maude

Playing cricket at the scene of a Rwandan massacre

Keep a dry eye if you can
I didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't this. I am at Nyamata church outside Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, and my guide is pointing to the spot where, as a nine-year-old boy, he lay for 36 hours, surrounded by the bodies of his family and with blood up to his neck. When it was dark, he says, he managed to crawl away.

More than 12,000 people had gathered here and at another church nearby. They thought they would be safe but crowding together just made the job easier for their genocidal killers.

My guide at the second church was 10 when she hid for a month in swamp land to escape the slaughter. There is a memorial on the church wall that she translates for me: "If you knew me and if you knew yourself, you would not have killed me."

Hear that in a church filled with the clothes, shattered skulls and dismembered bones of the victims, and keep a dry eye if you can.

The next day our party travels south to Murambi, a hill school set in stunning scenery. This is where local authorities directed 50,000 people "so they could be safe".

Once there the army and militias moved in. We meet a survivor called Emmanuel, who has a bullet hole in his head. His wife and five children didn't make it. We visit the school huts and see the bodies, preserved with lime, of thousands of victims exhumed from the mass graves into which they were bulldozed. We stumble out white-faced, saying: "never again". And then we remember Darfur . . .

Roll over! Roll over!
I'm here with about 100 other people on a trip led by Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative shadow international development secretary.

We start on Sunday with a briefing by the British ambassador, Nick Cannon. This is the most densely populated country in Africa, he says, where most people are subsistence farmers. There is desperate poverty and, of course, the legacy of genocide - the shocking slaughter, in only 100 days, of about 1m of the minority Tutsi people in 1994.

With 29 others I will be teaching English in Kigali to Rwandan primary school teachers. Armed with nothing but a short course in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) I face a class of 60 expectant faces. At mid-morning break, we teachers compare notes and ideas. Songs! Yes, songs are the thing: "Head, shoulders, knees and toes!" and "Ten in a bed!" Both go down a storm and lessons thereafter are punctuated with cries of "Roll over! Roll over!"

Leaving my star pupils in charge of the class on Friday I go to meet Paul Kagame, president of the country. He rescued Rwanda from the grip of insanity in 1994 and has led it back to normality.

He listens as we tell him what we are doing. David Mundell leads a team working with judges and lawyers to develop their skills. Another is building a community and sports centre for Kigali survivors, while out in the west near Lake Kivu a team of medics led by Andrew's wife Sharon are treating patients and training local doctors and nurses. We are teaching English and a City team is advising the government and companies on what is needed to attract investment.

What an incredibly impressive man Kagame is. He now has the huge challenge of keeping Rwanda free from corruption, rigorously separating private and public interests and ensuring that the judiciary is truly independent.

Blair's chaps show up
I finish the week with a bruised arm after opening the batting for a UK side that takes on the Rwandan national cricket team. The pitch is concrete and next to the school where 2,500 people were murdered in 1994 (a massacre later portrayed in the 2005 film Shooting Dogs, which was also filmed here). You can still see bullet holes in the stand.

I've never played on a concrete pitch but I manage to fudge my way to 20. We lose. Even the combination of embassy staff, Conservative volunteers and a couple of chaps from the office of Tony Blair (he acts as an adviser to the government here) who mysteriously show up is not enough to overcome the cream of Rwandan cricket.

Beautiful and haunted
As we leave my class gives me the send-off of a lifetime. Who has gained more from our visit? I hope their English has improved - but what I learnt from them, and from their beautiful and haunted land, I will never forget.

--
Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: +250-08470205
Home: +250-55104140
P.O. Box 3867
Kigali-Rwanda
East Africa
Blog: http://www.cepgl.blogspot.com
Skype ID : Kayisa66