I believe all first timers to the one time war-torn Eastern African country of Rwanda would imagine it to be the remains of a massacred country. At least, those were the pictures the propagandist western media painted of that country. They called it names like “the Rwandan massacre”, “the Rwandan genocide” and many more. The western media showed us charred bodies and packs of human skulls all over the internet and on TV. Indeed, there is no doubt that Rwanda went through a period of ethnic cleansing, where the Hutus described their Tutsi brothers and sisters as ‘cockroaches’ and brutalized most of them as such. This was the sad event that many politicians round the world had sought to pin on my honorable profession, journalism, because one broadcaster working for a radio station at the seat of the then Rwandan government, controlled by the Hutus, went on air and described the Tutsis and cockroaches, and practically endorsed their massacre. What those myopic politicians forget is that the station was controlled by the Hutus, and that broadcaster was obviously a Hutu, who had his life and family to protect by kowtowing to the dictates of those politicians. So if there was anyone to blame, it is not the journalist/broadcaster per se, but the power drunk and blood thirsty politicians who manipulated that broadcaster. I was in Rwanda to witness the launch of an International Telecom Gateway Monitoring and Verification System for that country. It is system that monitors the exact number of minutes of foreign calls that come into Rwanda from overseas, so that government would know how much it should get in taxes from those calls. There is a similar project in Ghana, which is already yielding great dividends for both the telecom operators and the state. But it has been stalled, somewhat at some point, due to a court action by some citizens, believed to have been sponsored by the telcos to make a case that such monitoring would interfere with their privacy, and the quality of the calls they receive from abroad. But going into a country like Rwanda with the kind of history it has in the eyes of the world, I wondered what other story I could tell about that country, which has featured in blockbuster movies like “Hotel Rwanda”, “Sometime in April” and in real life TV reports as a country filled with blood thirsty and treacherous people? THE AIRPORT My mind was completely blank about what other story I could tell about Rwanda until I touched down at the Kigali International Airport. I had thought I was going to see a ruined airport, but I was wrong. Having flown into Rwanda from OR Thambo Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, the gargantuan difference was very clear. The Kigali International Airport was way-way smaller than even the domestic airport at Port Elizabeth in SA. It was very modest, but definitely not ruined. And the weather was more friendly because I had already developed blisters on my lower lip from the extremely cold weather in South Africa. By the way, I was one of 55 passengers who left SA to Kigali, via Bujumbura. Majority of the passengers alighted in Bujumbura, and only 15 of us finally arrived in Kigali. And in all my travels, Rwanda was the first place, outside of ECOWAS that I went into without a visa and had to pay for and collect my visa in the form of an ordinary stamp in my passport right at the airport. I think it is a strategic way of attracting tourists and investors. But just before I could enter the arrival hall and collect my visa, the first thing that attracted my attention was the picture of a big bird at the entrance of the arrival hall. At that moment I asked myself silently, “could this picture be my clue to that big positive story that has not been told about Rwanda – why would they put it at the entrance of the arrival hall – what does it say about them? I intended to find out. On entering the arrival hall the first thing that hits you is a big pillar branded TIGO, then another one on the right side of four Passport Control booths, also branded TIGO. Then right behind Passport Control are, guess what, three MTN brandings; you cannot miss them. I may have missed other brandings possibly because I have a special attraction towards telecoms. But it was obvious that the two telecom brands dominated the branding in that arrival hall, no doubt about it. There were only four booths at Passport Control. That gave me a certain sense of pride about my country Ghana. I had sorrowed over Ghana's Kotoka International Airport just five hours ago when I left OR Thambo Airport in South Africa. Just Terminal A of OR Thambo is probably enough to build about five of Ghana's KIA. But the Rwanda's KIA is about the size of the domestic airport in Kumasi; so at least we are also ahead of Rwanda, I told myself silently. While waiting in the queue at Passport Control, the journalists in me started putting words together for this article, and then it said to me, 'you need a picture to tell the story better.' I brought out the “camera in my phone” or was it “the phone in my camera”, and took a shot. Seconds after I had taken the shot, one immigration officer walked to me and asked to see the picture I had taken – I obliged and he ordered me to delete it, and I did. For a moment, I thought he was going to do something more drastic, but he simply walked away and started serving other visitors. I thought to myself, if there are such nice people in Rwanda, how come that country went into the state it went into, where its people killed and maimed each other, and destroyed property the way they did. Whereas I had no direct answer to that question, I thought I had my hook to what stories I could tell about Rwanda – the beautiful little everyday things I see about the people of Rwanda. Ebrima Jobe and Cyrus picked me up at the Airport, and we drove to down town Kigali, could easily pass for any place in my country Ghana. Once again, because of my background as a telecoms writer, I could not miss the big MTN, Tigo and new entrant Airtel billboards; they were the biggest you could find on your way from the airport into town. The first thing I learnt was MTN was market leader with almost every phone user in Rwanda having an MTN number; followed by Tigo, then Airtel. Rwandatel, the state-owned carrier is the smallest and only offers landline service.