Well, it all goes to show that you can’t predict anything. There I was, like all distant observers, predicting an apocalypse in Mid-Africa, and what happens? The Hutu refugees, among whom a million deaths were forecast, lift their burdens and turn for home. Hundreds of thousands, shuffling along, winding their various ways back to whence they came a year and a half ago.

Observers have spoken in biblical terms. The scale of the movement is such that Cecil B de Mille would have blanched. It is like nothing we can have imagined. This was an exodus. Similar things have happened before, but not on such an extraordinary scale.

But size isn’t everything. What is even more amazing is that nobody expected it. There was no publicity campaign. In fact, the UN and the aid agencies anticipated a bloodbath before there was a resolution of the refugee crisis.