After the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster, four independent volunteers race off to Sri Lanka to see if they can help. With little money or experience they arrive in the main city, meeting each other by fate, rent a van fill it with supplies and drive off along the coast. They stumble into Peraliya, a tribal village devastated by a 40 foot tsunami wave, leaving more than 2500 people dead.
The volunteers set up a first aid station and quickly find themselves in charge of a refugee camp caring for over three thousand people. What was originally a two-week journey spirals into a year-long odyssey of hope, heartbreak and setbacks as the villagers slowly begin to rise up against them when the worlds’ donated tsunami money never materializes. The volunteers break every rule in the ‘Disaster Aid books’ and out of the rubble an entire village is re-born.