"Waati" is the story of Nandi, a black child in South Africa in the still triumphant days of apartheid. Violence and energy of despair, mad desire of knowledge and liberation through knowledge, encounters of love and compassion. All of Africa's convulsive present, all of its past of misery and magic, all of its "inescapably better" future, passes through Nandi's itinerary as she travels through South Africa, the Ivory Coast, Mali and Namibia, "where the earth seems to have begun". Little by little, Nandi discovers her continent and her reality as an African woman.