Look hard enough in Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and you can find a public beach. It's a meagre patch of grass and rocks kneeling before the mighty Lake Kivu. But it's a beach all the same.
I could see mothers and children running to the water with yellow jerry cans. A sitting woman held a child under one arm while slicing cassava tubers with the other. She handed a piece to a group balancing giant platters of tilapia fish on their heads. All was serene until a furious shout smashed the atmosphere – and it was aimed at me.
I looked up to see a tall, uniformed policeman striding towards me, barking French and waving his arms. He demanded that I hand over my pocket video camera and I complied. Other officers in uniform and plain clothes, some carrying rifles, appeared as if from nowhere, yelling with hostility.
One muttered: "Maybe he's a spy taking pictures to show the enemy."
The day's tempo had changed in a flash, and I could feel the situation slipping out of my control. It was like freefalling and not knowing if and when you'll hit the bottom. So I decided to stay still and quiet because, fortunately, I had a Congolese colleague to do the talking.
He patiently debated with the guards and showed them my $250 worth of media accreditation. More men joined the throng with more harsh French and wild gesticulating. Then my friend said he would call their commander to sort the matter out. The righteous anger miraculously gave way to jovial smiles.
"Hello, I am Philippe," said the first policeman, shaking my hand and returning my accreditation and camera with a flourish.
Later I was in the more comfortable setting of a hotel bar on the Congolese rivieria. "I call this hell in paradise," said an aid worker, dragging on a cigarette as evening rain began spitting into the lake.
The hell is decades of war, millions of lives lost and one of the highest incidence of rape in the world. Fighting between the Congolese army, incorporating former rebel factions, and armed groups continues in the jungles. But a tactical alliance between Congo and Rwanda has many cautiously believing that this could be the beginning of the end.
Some of the victims go to Goma's Heal Africa hospital. It was wiped off the map by a volcanic eruption in 2002 but has been rebuilt.
In the emergency ward, I asked Dr Lwango Kibishwa if, after all these years, he can be anything but cynical. "Yes," he said. "They were fighting in other countries before. They were fighting in America, they were fighting in South Africa. Today it's over. One day we will also have peace."
The hospital's programme manager, Lyn Lusi, is from Ramsgate in Kent. She has lived in Congo for nearly 40 years and I wondered how the political climate in 2010 compares.
"There's definitely a feeling of optimism," she said. "I know that the foreigners who come in and don't know Congo see how things run and moan, saying this is an awful place, how terrible. But we who have been here a long time see signs of hope. I see a lot of positive change, but it's not going to change overnight."
I drove off and bumped and bounced onward, past the steel gates of aid agencies and NGOs, past wooden shacks selling haircuts or sweets, past the giant concrete façade of Goma university. Countless motorcyclists jostled for position with Land Rovers in the great congested race across town.
It was gritty, it was noisy, it was fast and furious and fantastic in its rough magic. Few people have access to electricity in this impoverished city built on volcanic rock, but they generate their own kinetic energy.
I went north into the countryside, crossing vast canyons of green born of some of the most fertile soil on earth. Villages of mudbrick houses and thatched roofs ascended the thickly forested hills. Children in pristine white and blue school uniforms lined up before the village teacher. Antelopes galloped on open savannah, an elephant dawdled and butterflies crowded on the dirt road like shards of stained glass in white, sky blue and fluorescent yellow.
All this, the world often likes to believe, is the "true Africa", urban and rural. This is supposedly the real deal, the place you come to "find yourself" and expel the toxins of the decadent west. It's the fantasy of romance, National Geographic faces and the exotic "other".
But what, I wondered, is so African about speaking French, the language of commerce and government here? Or riding a Chinese-made motorcycle? Or wearing Chelsea and Real Madrid football shirts? Or driving trucks with window stickers that proclaim "Jesus is Lord" or "Jerusalem"?
Today's Congolese farmer wields a machete in one hand and a mobile in the other. "Africa" is elusively diverse and dynamic. Congo is no more or less African than Cairo or Cape Town, but rather another facet of the same diamond.
