Under a monkey-bread tree in the heart of Africa children listen to a wise old man who tells them the story of young Maki who runs away from a slave trader and makes friends with a giraffe named Zarafa. Shortly afterwards the giraffe is caught; he is to be given to the French king as a gift. Maki refuses to let this happen. He promises the giraffe’s mother that he will bring Zarafa back to her. Accompanied by a desert prince named Hassan and a balloonist named Malaterre, Maki undertakes an adventurous trip by balloon over the Mediterranean and the snow-capped Alps to Paris, where the arrival of the first giraffe on the European continent is a great sensation.
