Two Dutch travellers fleetingly cross each other’s paths at the airport in Mozambique. Accountant Fliers van Deventer is on his way to a friend’s villa to lay low for a while. He’ll enjoy cigars, walks on the beach and the wholesome company of the other expats. But then he becomes the patron of his gardener’s unwell daughter, and all of a sudden Fliers is confronted with the realities that surround him. Biologist Rineke Friedl is on her way to the remote African island of ‘Europa’, where the growing rat population is threatening the local birds and sea turtles. She is drawn into a power battle with the French soldiers stationed on the island. The situation is put to the test when a stranger, who has washed up on the shore, challenges the island’s sensitive equilibrium.

In Nobody Belongs Here Van Oord questions whether it is possible to step out of the shadow of the colonial past. Both Rineke and Fliers are forced to take radical decisions.