What is changing in the life of a person living in a small town of Tanzania, when she gets the diagnosis of diabetes or/and hypertension? How does s/he deal with the bureaucracy of the health care system? Where else does s/he seek care? The women and men I met during my field research had found different ways of living with these diseases. I try to understand what aspects are structuring their possible agency, and the way how they are dealing with the situation. Which possibilities are opening up to a person, and how are these possibilities dependent upon their membership in specific communities? In the following presentation, I present my work in progress and focus on questions that are coming up while analyzing my first research data.