Tihelo and her sister live with their mother, a domestic worker, in a Witwatersrand township. It is the 1980s: a time of school boycotts, stay-aways, bloody police crackdowns and hippos in the streets. Longing for an education and the opportunities it would bring, thirteen-year-old Tihelo slowly becomes involved in the struggle for freedom. But other things weigh on Tihelo's mind too: the loss of a friend to a multi-racial school, her sister's unplanned pregnancy, and whether with skin so much lighter than the rest of the family, she really is her mother's child. Ultimately Tihelo blazes out as a modern young woman with dreams and ambitions, who will plot her own path to the future.