Set in the seventies during the last year of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's brutal, often surreal rule, Waiting evokes the fear and courage of a small close-knit society uncertain of what the edicts of a madman or the marauding of his disintegrating army will bring with each day.

Safe for years in their remote country village far from Amin's political battlefield, teenager Alinda and her family experience terror firsthand when the troops of the self-proclaimed "Last King of Scotland" use the local highway to escape pursuing Ugandan and Tanzanian allied forces. With her pregnant mother on the verge of labor, her brother anxious to join the Liberators, and a house full of hungry siblings, neighbors, and displaced refugees, Alinda learns what it takes to survive, and eventually to plan for a new life.