IT CAN BE TOUGH to get Rwandans to open up about the genocide, but nearly everyone we met had a story. A driver in Kigali, a Tutsi in his thirties, told us how he'd hidden in the woods and tied plastic bags filled with powdered milk around his feet to throw the militiamen's dogs off his scent. Saidi, a gregarious driver hired by Ritchey's cycling team, had been a spy for the Tutsi resistance, infiltrating the Hutu leadership and reporting back on when the killings would occur. A chef who works at Boyer's house, in Butare, had recently been reunited with a son he'd presumed dead since the mid-1990s.

In Ruhengeri, we were invited to dinner at the modest home of John Rucyahana, an Anglican bishop who lives in the compound where we were staying. A small, stocky man dressed in matching olive shirt and pants, he welcomed us and took a seat in the living room under an enormous map of the world. As a meal of chicken, goat, and rice was served, there was a loud thunderclap, and rain rattled off the tin roof.

Bishop John told us his story. Of Tutsi descent, his family had gone into exile in Uganda and the Republic of the Congo in the sixties, when the new Hutu regime began targeting their countrymen. Like other older Rwandans, he pointed out that the 1994 genocide had been preceded by many smaller attacks. "This country lost about 300,000 people between 1959 and 1962," he said.

For most of the next 30 years, the bishop was in Uganda with 150,000 other Tutsi; he spent 1988 at a seminary in Pennsylvania. After reports of renewed killings in Rwanda reached Uganda in the mid-nineties, he returned to his homeland. "The forces of darkness were unleashed here," he said as rain battered the roof. "I was feeling a huge call to come witness the horrors."

In America, of course, the Rwandan genocide inspires guilt, because our government did little to stop it. It's immeasurably worse in Rwanda. "You need to be able to understand the guilt we carry," Bishop John said. "Imagine how it must feel for those who took the machete to their brothers."

Lately, however, the bishop is seeing reason for hope. There's a stable government, led since 2000 by President Paul Kagame, a former Tutsi general. There are promising steps in education and public health, especially in the prevention and treatment of HIV. Kagame's business-friendly approach has helped earn Rwanda's coffee farmers major corporate buyers in Costco and Starbucks. Last year, Google sent a team to the country to set up communication services at government ministries and three universities. Meanwhile, the government has been aggressively investing in Web access across the country, a debatable choice for a nation made up mostly of subsistence farmers.

There's also been a pronounced uptick in the number of adventure travelers. Though tourists have long come to see mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park, the visits were usually part of East Africa package safaris. Now Rwanda is becoming a destination in its own right. Part of the draw is the genocide memorials, which attract sightseers looking for the same kind of inspiration that Ritchey felt. But upscale outfitters have also launched a number of new trips since 2003, and in June the celebrated Governors' Camp chain opened a luxury resort in the foothills of the Virunga Mountains.

Ritchey's Project Rwanda is supposed to add to the positive momentum. The coffee bikes, which farmers buy for about $185, have the potential to boost the annual revenues of Rwanda's half a million growers. The Boyer-led cycling team provides both international PR—it's raced in a couple of U.S. events—and national pride. Since the team came together, in the fall of 2006, they've shown signs of becoming a serious contender in the African Continental Confederation. Their top rider, Abraham Ruhumuriza, is ranked 72nd out of 400 African cyclists and, at the African trials, just missed a chance to compete in mountain biking at the Beijing Olympics.

"It's a real blessing," Bishop John said of the team. "We can use them to blow the bottleneck—for Rwandans to see that they, too, can fly."