On my first day in Kigali, I had lunch on the veranda of the Banana hotel, eating perfect grilled fresh fish from Lake Kivu.

The horrors of the 1994 genocide weave into every part of life here in Rwanda, and before long, the glamorous owner, Françoise, confided that, on her return to Kigali from Brussels after the massacres, it was “like a horror movie”, silent and completely empty except for the crows and the shamefaced dogs that had gorged on the bodies.

She had accompanied a friend returning to his house, and as he opened each room, a different huge dog snarled at them. Everyone in the house had been killed, everyone eaten. “It was like a dog hotel,” she said, sipping a Pernod.

Another friend had asked Françoise to go and check out what remained of her home. “All I found was one little wooden comb — that’s all, nothing else. But when I gave it to my friend, she wept with joy and clasped it to her.” Rwandans are fond of saying “That was then, and this is now”, but then is very much a part of now.

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The genocide destroyed the country’s institutions and infrastructure, but now there’s building everywhere: new restaurants, new hotels, all just beginning. All tourists are encouraged to go to the genocide museum, and it is inspiring rather than depressing. It reminds us that humanity is capable of surviving anything.

Emotionally, it’s a big-dipper journey. Yet by the end of eight days in this beautiful little country of verdant hills, volcanoes, rivers and lakes, right in the middle of central Africa, I felt more energised and relaxed than if I’d lolled on a Maldives beach. I spent a day visiting an impoverished nursery school, a farmer who’d had 14 children and the Nyamata church where the clothes of the 10,080 people massacred there are piled up on pews.

I met a man and woman who lived next door to each other, peacefully enough, it seemed. One was a gaunt Hutu who had killed, the other a Tutsi, in a Tintin T-shirt, whose family had been wiped out.

Like so many of those involved in the genocide, he’d been let out of jail after nine years on condition that he went back and asked forgiveness, face to face, from those whose family members he had killed.

On the six-hour road trip to Nyungwe forest, to see the chimpanzees, I saw emerald tea plantations, lush hills and valleys, and brightly dressed women sprouting babies on their backs. One woman in batik African dress balanced a single papaya on her head, another a rolled-up multi­coloured umbrella, another a handbag, a fourth the giant blade of a saw.

Sprinklings of prisoners in pale pink worked in the fields, while storks stood by, censorious supervisors. A tiny child carried firewood that stuck out at least 4ft on either side.

Everything was clean and green, as if prepared for a Merchant Ivory film. After three hours of early-morning trekking, we found the chimpanzees at the top of 160ft ficus trees, but they immediately turned their backs, then swung off further into the rainforest.

From the forest of evasive chimps, we travelled up to Kibuye, on Lake Kivu, another epic bumpy car journey, this time along a dirt road. Children played on home-made stilts, another on a makeshift seesaw, as we drove through the softly wooded hills, catching glimpses of the immense grey stillness of Lake Kivu.

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