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Demons. November 20th, 2011. We were sitting at the tables, talking about my climb to come and dreadlocks passed, and I head screaming. Simran and I look at each other, the others still talk. It sounds like a child being beaten, piercing, repeated cries. Some ask, is it a bird? No, it sounds like a person. The noises stop, and we talk again. 
Suddenly, as Madison and Sarah chat next to me, I hear the sounds again. They come from the other side of our garden wall, straight ahead. Aryian and I jump up, because it's apparent that some one is in pain. We walk then run down the cobbled driveway to the gate, and poke the dozing watchman. We should do something, what is going on, we say, and open up the heavy wooden door to the pebbled and dirt street. A crowd is gathered, and we walk toward the congested center. A slender figure is held down by four people, one on each limb, back on the hard and rough ground. She thrashes, screaming and yelling and laughing and crying, beautiful Swahili words mutilated in muffled and pained sounds. We don't know what to do, how to help. We ask what is the matter, and Joseph, one of the other night watchmen with curved kind eyes when he smiles, says she is sick. Madison asks, does she have an illness, is she having a baby, like what is the problem. And I ask, pointing to my head, is she sick up here. And Joseph says, yes, I think you understand.
The only thing that is clear to me is that the slight girl in pain needs to be taken to a hospital. Baba comes out, and we all ask him to call an ambulance for her. He says, no, the only way to help her is to call the pastor, and he will pray for her. She has demons inside of her, and spiritual, said sp-ir-it-u-al healing is the only way to save her. They are calling the pastor on the mo-bi-le phone as we spe-ak Dada. (meaning daughter) 
I am floored still. A fourteen year old girl, dripping sweat even apparent in the dark, is thought to be possessed by demons. Some from the home base think, oh, it's just cultural, that's just the way it is. 
Jenna, a licensed nurse/mother figure from Ohio, came out, and asked the girl questions, calmed her down, after forty-five minutes of the crowd laughing, jeering. Small children ran around the gravel, enjoying the community spectacle. Jenna walked her back to her house, down the street from us. Her father says he might take her to a clinic. Baba says, no, that is not what she needs, she needs a church. (the pastor was called, and the girl continued to flail and cry) What can I do to help a child who doesn't understand why she is out of control of herself, happening since nine months before? To be told that you have the devil inside, and not be able to get it out, to have your neighbors, your community, laughs t you as youa re writing on the ground, speaking nonsense like TAKE MY BLOOD and I WILL COME LATER, translated for us by Joseph, to have your only salvation lie in the hands of God?
The Masai girl Jenna was seeing at KCMC, with burns all over Hrbody, died yesterday. She would have survived in the United States. She's in pain, staggering breaths, they said, and there's not a good chance she will make it. Jenna received the call last night, two days before she leaves to return to America. 
Mary Cellen sits on my lap in the pouring rain. We stay under the awning, on unstable wooden benches outside my school. Clara takes a metal pencil box from her backpack, on which is a map of the world. I show where I'm from. And I say, I am going to be leaving soon, to go back home. And they say, why? You are leaving? 
My nerves and mind are scattered and rushing and I'm climbing tomorrow and I hope I make it up but what if I don't and does it matter? Peace, come please. I think about so much.