ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the experience of Arminda, a community home-based care (CHBC) volunteer working with people living with AIDS in central Mozambique. Improving food insecurity and strengthening social support may have synergistic beneficial effects on both mental health and HIV outcomes among people living with HIV/AIDS in resource-limited settings such as central Mozambique. A single mother of three in her sixth decade of life, Arminda was a CHBC volunteer participating in an ethnographic study on the local impact of the HIV/AIDS treatment scale-up in central Mozambique. This chapter focuses on the experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS. In the months since Arminda had first seen young woman, Chica had begun antiretroviral therapy and her health and appearance had improved significantly, despite spotty adherence and clinic attendance. For Arminda, the 'work in the neighborhoods' was the difficult work of relating to accompanying patients and their families.