For Sofia, the obstacles to studying medicine extend far beyond the distractions of her boyfriend and her family: the women in her family break rocks into fine gravel, her father works far away in the mines, there is never any money, there is never time to study, and the teachers are as poor as the students. “Be careful,” her mother tells her, “The road is full of traps” and a moment of weakness, an error in judgment or even a uniform shirt burned by an iron—all these things can cost her a place at the university, an irretrievable loss in a country with so few opportunities for women. But for Sofia, striving against the odds is what she does best, if only to prove, that in a land where sending a girl to school is considered akin to “watering another man's garden,” educating a woman is not a waste of time.