KIGALI, Rwanda — It would perhaps not be overstating it to say that first-time visitors to Rwanda are likely to come with both fascination and trepidation. Fascination primarily because the landlocked country smack in the heart of Africa is famous as a habitat for gorillas, which the tourism promotion authority here prominently displays on various gigantic billboards. Besides, with a land size of only slightly more than one third of my homeland of Sabah but with a population size twice that of Sabah, Rwanda has in recent years been touted as one of the most promising African countries.

But one cannot help but come here with a palpable sense of trepidation, too. For this is also where one of the saddest and most senseless tragedies in modern human history took place. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 — only 30 years ago — saw approximately 800,000 people (estimates go as high as over a million), mostly ethnic Tutsis and some moderate ethnic Hutus, killed by Hutu extremists over a span of a hundred days or so. It was one of the darkest chapters in the modern annals of human conscience.