After Mass one day, Monica sees two figures coming through the dust — her sister, the accused witch Inunjamo, her Ovambo husband, Nankoro, and their small child. After Rosarto, her white husband and a rich local official, orders her to prepare a room for a visiting lieutenant, she meets her family. They address her by her Herero name: Milandaou. Her conversion to Christianity and pregnancy with Rosarto's child shock them. Afterward, Inunjamo and Nankoro leave for their ancestral hill village, where a shaman, Monica's uncle, will divine whether she is a witch. The Lieutenant, Jacques Duante, soon arrives, and Monica and Rosarto entertain him. She tells him curtly that her aunt lives in the hill village and that her uncle divined her sister's coming, then leaves for the settlement herself. There, she discovers that the witch spirit has left Inunjamo, who then tells her the real reason for her visit — while hunting, she and her husband accidentally killed a trapper. Her aunt and uncle blame Monica for telling Rosarte and Duante about them because it could endanger her sister, harshly criticizing her for being a Christian and no longer one of them. Terrified, Monica tries to bargain sex with Duante for clemency, but Rosarte catches them in the act. Later, Inunjamo and Nankoro are captured, but she cannot help them. Her uncle, the shaman, stands outside their house for the entire next day to exact revenge, and by the next morning, Monica has miscarried.