None of the players in Rwanda’s Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cup squad were born when cricket was introduced to the country. That’s because the game only got there in the year 2000, 116 years after the territory first became part of a European empire, 38 years after its independence from Belgium and six years after the genocide that fundamentally changed everything for the people who lived there, and those who have come since.

Before the horrible 100 days between April and July 1994, when more than a million people from the minority Tutsi tribe were killed, Rwanda was part of Francophone Africa. After those awful events, Rwanda chose to shed itself of much of its past, including its colonial affiliations. The French and their language were seen as part of the package that needed to be discarded as Rwanda accused French politicians of supporting the genocidal regime.

Their eastern neighbours, Uganda and Tanzania, who had housed refugees during the genocide including some of the post-1994 leaders, both used English as the medium of instruction at schools and in business and Rwanda, in a bid to start afresh and attract more foreign investment, decided to do the same. With the English language, came some culture and part of that was cricket.

“After 1994, we had an influx of people from English-speaking countries like Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Many of them were students and they were students who went to cricket-playing schools,” Julius Mbaraga, the secretary general of the Rwandan Cricket Association told ESPNcricinfo.

One such institution was the Ntare School, where Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni played cricket and Rwanda’s current president Paul Kagame was schooled. Another was Busuga College, which holds a record 18 schools’ cricket titles and has educated the bulk of Uganda’s national cricket side. “There was also a big population of Rwandans in these schools, who were exposed to cricket,” Mbaraga said. “And then we had a relatively big Asian population in Rwanda, particularly Indians and Pakistanis, who were playing mini cricket in their backyards.”

All these groups of people were brought together by Charles Haba, a law student at the University of Rwanda, who went on to become the founding president of the Rwandan Cricket Association in 2000. “He mobilised the students in the university and also rallied the Asian community in Kigali and that is how some sort of mini league was born,” Mbaraga said.

At the beginning, that league was played by only men and boys but as Rwandan Cricket formalised itself, it quickly put in place structures that would be more inclusive. “From the early days, we knew that if we wanted to take the game to the next level, we had to have a very strong school’s cricket structure. When we started schools’ cricket, it was not only for boys. We made sure we had schools’ cricket for girls as well,” Mbaraga said.

The parallel developments worked. In 2004, Rwanda sent its first men’s team to the ICC Development Program in Africa’s first Affiliate tournament, hosted in Benoni. That’s the same city as one of the venues of the upcoming inaugural Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cup, where Rwanda are part of the field. “We’ve never looked back,” Mbaraga said.

But they have, and it’s why they’ve got to where they are today.

Every year, Rwandans commemorate the genocide with a lengthy mourning period that runs from April to July. The events are at their most poignant in the week between April 7-14, when the worst of the massacres took place. “In that period, we cannot play music or entertainment on TV or radio. It is really dedicated to mourning, remembering what happened, learning and making sure it never happens again,” Mbaraga said.