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Rwanda is an enchanting country where people readily greet you in the street, and where smiles are always returned.Ìý

It seems incredible that just 14 years ago, this was the scene of a genocide in which so many took part and in which over 800,000 people were brutally killed.

Telling stories

Last Sunday we visited Murambi, a school where in April 1994 Tutsis had come from the surrounding countryside, having been told it would be a place of sanctuary.Ìý

A week later, the 50,000 men, women, children and babies who had gathered were butchered in just two days – a pattern repeated in massacres throughout the country.Ìý

The Murambi Memorial has been one of the most harrowing experiences of the trip.Ìý It is just row after row of simple classrooms, containing the remains of some of the victims, preserved in lime.Ìý

The smell of decay hits you first.Ìý The dead are laid out on slatted wooden tables.Ìý Some of the dead are babies and children. Many of the dead have had their skulls smashed.

Because of its terrible past, and its acute poverty, Rwanda can be said to represent the worst of Africa.Ìý

But it also represents the best, and hope for the future, because of the great strides it has made since the genocide.Ìý

As they tell you here repeatedly, Rwanda learns from the past, but it doesn’t live in the past.

With my fellow teachers

This is the second year the Conservative party has sent a team of volunteers to carry out short projects in the country.Ìý

It has grown from 34 to 105 of us this year, all covering our own costs.Ìý The projects cover work in education, medicine, economic development, justice, and the building of a community centre.

I was one of 29 teachers of English who came to teach over 1500 Primary School teachers, based in three different locations.Ìý

ÌýI was based with seven others in the capital, Kigali. There were over 500 Rwandan teachers for us to divide up between us and my class was over 50.Ìý

Before going to Rwanda we had all had taken a basic Teaching English as a Foreign Language course but as we approached our first class this seemed terribly inadequate.

We, including Shadow Cabinet Minister Francis Maude MP and Andrew Mitchell our Shadow International Development Secretary, were all very nervous.

The Rwandan teachers, my pupils, were hungry for knowledge. They wanted to improve their skills, especially their pronunciation.Ìý

My group of pupils

They knew the grammar well in theory but using it in written exercises and when speaking was much more difficult.

It was much harder work and more tiring than I had expected.Ìý Six hours a day was very intensive for them as well as for us. The two weeks proved challenging for me but I saw them improve significantly.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when it came to saying goodbye.Ìý We all received presents from our class and we left with the sound of singing in ours ears and cries from them all to make sure we go back again next year.

It was great on our last day to see President Kagame come and open the Community centre, built by others from our group of volunteers for a village of women and orphan headed families who were all survivors of the genocide.Ìý

It is complete with a football pitch and play areas for the children, giving the local community a real sense of pride.Ìý

After the President had left, many of our group had great fun joining in an impromptu football match between our volunteers and a local boys’ team on their new pitch.

It was been an amazing experience for all of us who went to Rwanda.Ìý The first aim was to do something positive for the country, and I think we did that, in a small way.Ìý

But there was another aim too: to educate us.Ìý

We discovered so much about Rwanda, about Africa, about aid and development, and about ourselves.Ìý On so many levels, we will never forget our brief time in this beautiful land.

Pauline Latham