Rituals, witchcraft, and animal slaughtering are things that I have no experience with and know very little about. I have been at Empilweni for a couple weeks now and have already heard several cases that involve at least one of these.

* Whenever I talk about cases on this blog, I will either be very brief or alter certain facts for client confidentiality.

The first case that I observed on my second day of work involved a mother and her child. The child said she was being controlled by a demon animal inside of her. She also said she was taking away by her grandparents as a young child and people put the demon animal's blood inside of her by cutting her skin. The mother also said she sees this animal sometimes and when she does, everything goes red. The mother said she is worried that a spiritual ritual was practiced on her child when she was taking away and now they are cursed.

Every Friday new cases are presented to the clinical psychologist who helped found Empilweni. This case was presented last week. The psychologist explained to the staff that the child was not actually being controlled by a demon animal. The same goes for what the mother was experiencing. It is simply all in their minds. We know this as a placebo. The staff at Empilweni had never heard this term before. Therefore when they first heard about this child, their reactions were fearful. They didn't know how to go about providing services for her. Just like me, the staff is completely open to learn more. They found this placebo idea fascinating.

Learning about cultural differences has been great. As I said in my last blog post, there is so much to learn from other people. Everyone has different perspectives and out looks on the world we live in and learning from them is invaluable.