The road to El Comajón isn’t an easy one. Tucked into the rural hills of Matagalpa (a region where nearly 6 in 10 people live outside any town or city) this small community is exactly the kind of place where a health emergency can turn deadly simply because help is too far away.
That’s why, with support from Nicaragua’s Ministry of Health (MINSA), AMOS staff traveled there to train local health volunteers, known as brigadistas, on the Birth Plan: a set of guidelines that helps them recognize signs of alarm in pregnant women, walk them through their checkups, and know exactly what to do in an emergency.
“Why does family planning matter for safe motherhood?” asked Socorro, AMOS staff member.
Daysi raised her hand first. “It helps us not have children too close together,” she said.
Socorro nodded. “It’s true,” He added. “I once met a 90-year-old woman who had 19 children. Her own grandmother had 24.”
The room broke into laughter; equal parts disbelief and recognition. Everyone knew a story like it.
But the conversation that followed the laughter is the one that matters most.
When talk turned to signs of alarm in newborns, one brigadista, Elioena, spoke about “moto” — a condition recognized in the community, where a baby cries inconsolably until, as she described it, nothing seems to help. She shared a traditional remedy passed down through generations: a gentle massage with chicken fat, believed to bring relief.
Socorro listened. He didn’t dismiss it. He knows these beliefs carry generations of care and concern for children, and that respect has to come first. His role, and AMOS’s, isn’t to arrive with all the answers. It’s to sit down, listen, and gently open space for new questions alongside the old wisdom.
By the end of the session, something had shifted — not because anyone was told they were wrong, but because they’d been given the tools to ask the right questions. Together, the group agreed: certain signs in a newborn should never be waited out at home. They mean it’s time to go to the health post, no exceptions.
That agreement, reached together in a room in El Comajón, is what protects a baby in that community tonight.
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