Also known as 'the land of a thousand hills', Rwanda is a landlocked country of lovely and various landscapes. The Virunga volcanic mountains have high altitude forests, world-famous mountain gorillas, and Lake Kivu offers beautiful beaches, jutting peninsulas and an archipelago of islands.

Many visitors have been surprised by the fact that Rwandans are now harmoniously living together only 15 years after the genocide that threatened to shatter the social fabric of the country. Reconciliation has not been easy. Upon assuming office, the Government of National Unity inherited a deeply scarred nation.

To set Rwanda's recent history in a context, you need to go as far back as the late 13th century when pastoral Tutsi tribes arrived from the south and conquered the agricultural Hutu and hunter-gatherer Twa inhabitants of Rwanda, establishing a feudal kingdom. A unified state was established by King Kigeri Rwabuguri during the 19th century, but this lasted only until 1890 when Rwanda was annexed as a province of German East Africa.

As part of the post-WWI settlement, Belgium was granted the right to govern Rwanda-Urundi. The Belgians sponsored the continued dominance of the Tutsi minority at the expense of the Hutu but were forced, in the 1960s, to concede independence under majority Hutu rule. Intercommunal violence between Hutus and Tutsis continued.

In 1973, Major-General Juvénal Habyarimana led a bloodless coup and established a Hutu-dominated military government. A few years later, the country’s sole political party was founded, dominated by Hutus. Sporadic fighting resumed in the early 1990s. Hutu extremist armed militias set about the systematic murder of Tutsis. The estimate is that around 800,000 people were killed.

From their bases in Uganda, the Rwandan Patriotic Front launched a full-scale invasion, but the bulk of the Hutu militia had fled to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo – a fact that has crafted a violent rift between the two countries.

Nevertheless, Rwandans are not only living together today but they are striving to be recognised as one people. Rwanda is a country of unimaginable beauty and such beauty defies its violent past: may it continue to defy it forever.