Chanda, a poor 12-year-old South African girl who lives in a township near Johannesburg, must make funeral arrangements after her baby half-sister Sarah dies.

After a drunken, emaciated Jonah is returned to Lillian by his sister, he again disappears, and rumors circulate that the family has AIDS.

A shaman tells Lillian that her house is bewitched, so she decides that she needs to go home to Tiro, the village where she grew up, and she bids a tearful farewell to her children.

Too distraught to take her exams, Chanda runs home and hears that her sister may have fallen into a deep hole along with another child, but Iris is only hiding, and the boy's fall is broken and his life saved by the body of Iris' dead father Jonah, which is extracted from the hole.

At Lillian's death bed, Mrs. Tafa begs Chanda to forgive her for trying to protect her from shame and confesses that her late son also had AIDS.