ABSTRACT
AIDS Relief D-Town consisted of a handful of non-professional members based in D-Town, a small town in a relatively rural, predominantly Catholic region. Paul was the founder of and driving force behind it. A persistent problem was that Paul–a trained health care worker and HIV positive himself–felt the co-organizers made him do the bulk of work. Eventually this led Paul to break away from that initial group and he re-established the organization as an informal self-help group of people with HIV/AIDS. Indeed, as his overall point of departure in the interview, Paul briefly indicated a history of engagement in self-help structures in the next bigger city and as an HIV positive activist. After his first suicide attempt, he reconstituted the organization as AIDS Relief D-Town only to find his hopes for finding solidarity and support in AIDS Relief eventually frustrated.
