When twelve-year-old Congolese boy, Joseph Muamba, is sold to a wealthy American family he wants to die.
Eventually, he comes to love the family and lives the life of the all-American boy. However, he cannot rid himself of a nagging feeling that he has a greater calling in life.
Fourteen years later he competes at the Beijing Olympics for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and wins his birth country’s first ever medal – gold in the decathlon. However, the nagging feeling persists, not satisfied by Olympic gold.
Revered, he returns to the Congo as a guest of the president and is mobbed by adoring crowds. Maya Tansi, his closest childhood friend, has metamorphosed into a beautiful woman, and they become reacquainted. When Maya tells him Western countries are bribing politicians and plundering the country’s mineral wealth, he does not believe her.
He soon finds Maya is right. Government induced bribery, corruption, rape, and murder are taking place in the Congo on a grand scale. Western and Chinese mining companies are ripping gold and minerals out of the earth without paying compensation or taxes. When the poor, oppressed people protest, they are imprisoned or murdered.
Finally, Joseph realizes what his calling is, but it involves risking his life, and the lives of those whom he loves.