I must have dozed off, because I came to when Elias slammed the door on his side. He popped his head through the car window and said, “I’ll be right back.”

I twisted around to spy on what he was doing and saw him run to the back of the vehicle and take two black plastic bags out. He quickly walked up a stone path that led to a set of three houses clustered together on a little hill. Each one had a garden in front, which this time of year had lots of veggies hanging from well-cared for plants. When he got to the one in the center, he looked inside the house, but waited outside.

After a moment a woman and two girls came out. I remembered them from the survey. They’d been curious when we were in their home, shyly asking questions. Elias greeted the mom and smiled at the girls as he handed them the bags. The woman’s face lit up and the little girls started peeking in. Soon another woman from a neighboring house came over with her girl as well. The mom from the first one started riffling through the bags, hefting out a pile of notebooks and school supplies, then passed it to her neighbor.

The woman threw her hands up and bowed to Elias, who shook his head like it was too much. He spoke to them for a couple of minutes as the girls got out the stuff he brought and the women nodded vehemently at whatever he was saying. Not long after, they said their goodbyes, and Elias jogged back to the truck and started us back toward the main road. Abraham and Yohannes spoke up from the back in Amharic, their voices amused.

After a moment I turned to him. “So you got some notebooks for the kids? That’s nice.”

He looked at me for a moment as if trying to figure out what my curiosity meant, but he just answered my question. “When we were here, I was talking to the mothers and they asked if I knew of any program that had school supplies for girls. You know how hard it can be for girls to go to school, especially in the rural areas, but these women want their girls to attend. They saved up to buy them the uniforms, which, when you have as little as they do, can mean sacrificing other things. But they didn’t have the notebooks and other supplies, so I thought I’d bring them some to encourage them.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“Is that what you did last night after we got back?”

“Yes, I went to the stationery store in town, since we’d be out before they opened this morning. We’re going to another area next week, so I wanted to bring them these while we were not too out of the way.”