This documentary follows the lives of communities that live on the shores of Lake Victoria in the regions of Shinyanga and Mwanza. In the towns that surround the Lake, young men take to their fishing boats before the break of dawn. Its hard work and most days their sweat yields just enough for them to survive. Inland, the towns are set against a hard backdrop.  Here, the earth is dry and harsh but beneath it lays wealth. At the mines, men dig and toil for months, washing away the dust from the rocks hoping for that illusive glimmer that may bring them wealth. With each passing day the hunger pulls and digs at their souls. 

The path to wealth for some is in the hands of witch-doctors who can speak to the spirits and provide them with a prescription for their poverty: a white potion. They are healers in places that have no doctors, councilors to those who need guidance or reconciliation and priests who commune with the ancestors. They recommend a potion for each ailment and send the patient off on a quest to get the ingredients.

The quest for these ingredients leaves a trail of tears, as the ingredients are hair, nails or limbs. The violence is real as some characters narrate what has been left in the aftermath – abandonment, emotional and psychological trauma, vulnerability and fear. For them their reality leaves them or their family members maimed or dead. The cost of being alive as a person with albinism is too high.

Places that were called home are marred by loss leaving lives that are governed by loneliness and fear. 

There is a beacon of hope in the heart of Mwanza, a ‘safe house’ for children. This refuge has become home for children and persons with albinism. Though they enjoy the safety of this place, their lives are led in confinement behind locked gates, away from the love and safety of their own families. 

Reconciliation and restoration of people with albinism back to the safety and love of their homes and communities seems bleak as the lure of wealth and prosperity is sold in a white potion.