Pokwa village is embroiled in the politics of appearance. Any child born with teeth or whose teeth begin to erupt from the upper jaw is seen as an emphatic sign of bad luck in the village. Villagers react by burying the child alive or dumping it in the fearful deep pond called the ndo ndo ndo. Alternatively, they abandon the child to die alone or to be devoured by wild animals in the dense forest. When the albino boy and his cleft-lipped twin sister are born in the village, the village's conservatives prepare to make the little ones' lives a suffocating night of horror. They enlist...