The new teacher in a school in Neant, a tiny Afican town, has a problem: the students, little by little, stop coming to classes and soon the school is empty. He eventually finds his students in the outskirts of the town, in a great white building; it is a factory where they make shoes and leather balls to sell to rich countries. They work twelve hours a day to earn one dollar. The children do not want to return to school because, as the mayor of the town says; "knowledge can wait, but hunger cannot." In spite of everything, the teacher does not give up.