It is surprising and sweet in Mueda district to see so many men at the clinics, accompanying their wives, holding children on their laps, bringing them wrapped in a traditional cloth called a capulana, the little ones sometimes nestled on their fathers' chests.

You don’t see this in southern or central Mozambique.

Not only do these men come, but they stay with their families for as long as needed. In clinics where a single nurse will see 70 patients a day and attend one or two births, the wait can be many hours.

We ask why. The answer is that Makonde society is matrilineal. That is, lineage – land, children and inheritance – are transmitted through the mother. At marriage, the man moves into the woman’s village, on her family’s land. She is the landowner. So the power balance inside the family differs from the south or central regions – patrilineal, patriarchal societies where the man pays lobolo, or dowry price, for the wife and she moves in with him.

The Makonde are a Bantu people, known for their wood carving, their tattoos, and their independence. Mozambique’s liberation struggle started in Mueda district in the mid-1960s. The first shot was fired in Chai village; the first popular uprising and ensuing massacre by the Portuguese colonials happened in Mueda town.

Bonifacio Mario is a general health technician at Chilindi clinic. “The local customs, habits, religion and culture make men want to take women and children to the clinic,” he explains.

One man brought his 3-year-old child to Mario because she had fallen and banged her head against a log. Mario reassured him it was nothing serious and the man left, relieved and smiling.

At Mbuo health post, Victor Vicente sits patiently by his wife, Fatima Mohamed. She had a miscarriage of twins two months ago and comes for a checkup from their village, three hours away on foot. Vicente speaks Portuguese and is soon acting as our translator. He looks puzzled when I tell him one seldom sees so many men at a clinic in the south.

“It is so nice to see men who visibly care for their family’s health,” says Marilena Urso, a gynecologist with the Spanish group Medicos do Mundo.

Editor’s note: Mercedes Sayagues is a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Mozambique. She recently journeyed to the most remote region of the country with a rookie reporter to investigate conditions at the health posts and hold a training session for radio reporters there. Much of what she found was grim evidence of a struggling, ineffective health care system. But there were some bright spots.