Clando wrestles with a dilemma facing more and more educated Africans: whether to work to change the autocratic regimes at home or seek their fortunes abroad. In chaotic, disorienting, urban Douala, where people are so busy surviving they don't have the time to confront the underlying causes of their desperation, Sobgui, a former computer programmer, has been reduced to driving a "clando," or gypsy cab. In flashbacks we learn that, having aided a pro-democracy group, Sobgui was abducted by the political police, only to be released to the realization that now his cell is all of Cameroon. A wealthy elder from his village provides Sobgui the opportunity to go to Germany, where he becomes involved with the Cameroonian immigrant community waiting for change to happen at home. But an affair with a German human rights activist convinces him that if you wait to change society, society will change you first.