MAYANGE, Rwanda — The late afternoon sun gleams off the tin roofs of this small farming village, as neighbors Xavier Nemeye and Cecile Mukagasana watch their children play tag around the banana trees.

The two friends were born here and share much of Mayange's daily life. They talk every day, pray at the same church and send their children to the same school, the only one there is.

They are also both recovering from the genocide just 13 years ago — when he hacked to death six of her friends with a machete.

The journey of two enemies to peace reflects a major challenge facing much of sub-Saharan Africa today: how to recover from the wars that have torn apart all but one country, Botswana. Over the past four decades, about 15 million Africans have died in war, only a little less than the population of Florida. An African peace agreement has as much chance of success as an American marriage: about 50/50.

Yet there is progress. African countries are experimenting with truth commissions of the kind South Africa made famous, war crime tribunals and amnesties. Despite brutal wars in Sudan and Congo, experts say Africa is more peaceful today than at any time in the past half-century.

Rwanda is now bringing together victims and killers in the genocide through community courts and villages like Mayange, once one of the worst killing fields in Africa. More than a decade after the slaughter of at least 500,000 people, there is a measure of peace — and hope.

"I can't imagine there will ever be another genocide," says Cecile, a 34-year-old mother of four whose poise reveals little of her past. "Because as people prosper and our lives continue to improve, it becomes easier for us as victims to forgive and forget what happened."

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Twenty-five miles south of Kigali, Mayange is a world away from the bustling capital. In this district of 10,000 people, the passage of time is marked by the planting and harvesting of maize. A dozen mud-brick shops are scattered around the main square, and shoeless children play on the red clay.

The modest village is at the forefront of Rwanda's plans to put the past in the past. Genocide victims and killers built it together with money from the government and donors, given on condition that they live in peace.

For centuries, families in Rwanda each had a hill of their own, lived off the land and saw their neighbors only once a week on market day. Rwandans have 34 words to describe hills, but almost no tradition of village life.

Some experts believe this isolation contributed to the genocide. So did poverty — both Xavier and Cecile used to live on less than a dollar a day in crowded mud huts thatched with palm fronds.