A lone priestess walks towards an underground chamber.
People line the streets to watch as she proclaims her innocence.
It doesn't matter.
She's already been judged and found guilty.
The sentence?
Live burial.
The underground chamber contains a portion of bread, water, milk, and oil.
She will have a lamp, a bed, and a blanket, but she won't emerge alive.
At the threshold, the priestess pauses, claims her innocence one last time, then enters the chamber never to be seen again by the Roman people.
The priestess is one of Rome's six Vestal Virgins, each carefully selected as children from Rome's most aristocratic families.
But now with her death, there are only five, and a new priestess must be chosen.
The six-year-old Licinia witnessed the spectacle, never suspecting that a few days later, she'd be chosen as the next Vestal Virgin.
Her age, her patrician family lineage, and her apparent good health makes her the best candidate to serve the goddess Vesta in the eyes of the Romans.
Her parents are proud that their daughter's been chosen.
Licinia is afraid, but she has no choice in the matter.
She must serve the goddess for at least the next 30 years.
For the first ten years of Licinia's service, she's considered in training, learning how to be a Vestal Virgin.
Her most important duty is keeping vigil over the flame of Vesta, the virgin goddess of the hearth.
Vesta doesn't have a statue like other Roman gods and goddesses.
Instead, she's represented by the flame which burns day and night in her temple located next to the Forum in the center of the city.
Like all Vestal priestesses, Licinia spends part of each day on shift, watching and tending to the flame.
The flame represents two things.
The first is the continuation of Rome as a power in the world.
The Romans believed that if the flame goes out, the city's in danger.
The flame also symbolizes the continuing virginity of Vesta's priestesses.
For the Romans, a Vestal's virginity signaled not only her castitas, or modest spirit and body, but also her ritual purity.
So Licinia knows she must never let the flame go out.
Her life, the lives of her fellow Vestals, and the safety of Rome itself depends upon it.
Licinia learns to collect water each day from a nearby fountain to cleanse the temple.
She learns the Fasti, the calendar of sacred rituals and she watches while the senior priestesses conduct sacrifices.
By the time Licinia completes her training, she's 16 years old.
Licinia understands that the way she must act is a reflection of the goddess she serves.
When it's her turn to collect the water, she keeps her eyes lowered to the ground.
When she performs sacrifices, she focuses intently on the task.
Licinia directs her energy towards being the best priestess she can be.
She's worried that someday the state will claim her life for its own purposes to protect itself from danger.
Licinia could be accused of incestum, meaning unchastity, at any time and be sacrificed whether she's innocent or guilty.
Licinia fully understands now why her predecessor was buried alive.
Ten years ago, the flame of Vesta went out.
The priestesses knew that they couldn't keep it a secret.
The future of Rome depended upon it.
They went to the chief priest and he opened an investigation to discover why the flame had failed.
Someone came forward and claimed that one of the Vestals was no longer a virgin.
That was the beginning of the end.
The accused protested her innocence, but it wasn't enough.
She was tried and found guilty.
That Vestal's death was meant to protect the city, but Licinia weeps for what has been lost and for what she knows now.
Her own path was paved by the death of another, and her life could be taken just as easily for something as simple as a flame going out.
I have a confession.
I have been in an affair since I was 17 years old.
I wish I could talk about butterflies in my stomach or maps I drew on the ground when I think about this affair, but I cannot.
I wish I could talk about sweet words spoken or gifts that I received from this affair, but I cannot.
All I can tell you about is the aftermath, about days I spent constantly asking: Why, why, why me?
I remember how it all began.
I was in my final year of high school, and my class had just won in sports, so we were singing and dancing and hugging each other.
I went and took a shower.
Then I went for dinner.
And when I sat down to eat, my teeth started chattering, and so I couldn't put the spoon in my mouth.
I rushed to the nurse's office, and because I couldn't talk, I just pointed at my mouth.
She didn't know what was happening, so she told me to lie down, and it worked -- after a few minutes, the chattering stopped.
I was about to dash out, and she told me -- no, she insisted -- that I go up to the dormitories to sleep.
Here I was in my final year of high school, just a few months from doing my end of high school exams and a few days from doing a set of exams we call here in Kenya "mocks," which are somehow meant to gauge how prepared one is for the final exams.
There is no way I was going to sleep and let a set of exams mock me.
I went to class, sat down, took my Kenyan history notes, and there I was, down Kenyan coastal town, with the great Mekatilili wa Menza, the Giriama woman who led her people against British colonial rule.
Then, without any notice, my left hand started jerking, and it was as if I was marking imaginary papers.
In and out it went, and with every stroke, one by one, my classmates stopped concentrating on their reading and started heather68@example.net.
And I tried really hard to stop it, but I couldn't, because it had a life of its own.
And then, when it was sure everybody was looking at us, in its final show and official introduction, I had my first full-blown seizure, which was the beginning of what has been a 15-year-long affair.
Seizures are the trademark characteristic for most types of epilepsy, and every first-ever seizure needs to be assessed by a doctor to determine if one has epilepsy or if it's a symptom of something else.
In my case, it was confirmed that I had epilepsy.
I spent a large chunk of my time in hospital and at home, and only went back to do my final exams.
I had seizures in between papers, but managed to get good enough grades to be admitted for an actuarial science degree at the University of Nairobi.
(Applause) Unfortunately, I had to drop out in my second year.
I didn't have good enough coping skills and a support community around me.
I was lucky enough to get a job, but I was fired from that job when I had a seizure in the workplace.
So I found myself in a space where I was constantly asking myself why this had to happen to me.
I lived in denial for a long time, and the denial was maybe because of the things that had happened, dropping out of school and being fired from my job.
Or maybe it was because of the things I had heard about epilepsy and about people living with epilepsy: that they would never live on their own; that they would never travel on their own or even get work; that they were outcasts, with a spirit in them that they needed to be delivered from.
And so the more I thought about these things, the more my seizures became, and I spent days with my legs locked, my speech became blurred and on days on end, this is how I'd be.
Two or three days after a seizure, my head and my hand would still be twitching.
I felt lost, like I'd lost everything, and sometimes, even the will to live.
(Sigh) I had so much frustration in me.
And so I started writing, because the people around me didn't have answers to the questions that I had.
And so I wrote my fears and my doubts.
I wrote about my good days and my bad days and my really ugly days, and I shared them on a blog.
And before long, I began to be seen and heard by people who had epilepsy and their families, and even those who did not have the diagnosis.
And I moved from that girl who constantly asked why me to one who not only self-advocates, but does it for those who are yet to find their voices.
(Applause) My seizures are greatly reduced, from two to three times a day, to sometimes two to three times in one year.
I went on -- (Applause) I went on to employ five people, when I began what was Kenya's first free mental health and epilepsy support line.
And I travel -- (Applause) And I travel to speak about my affair, all these things that I had been told people like me living with epilepsy could never be able to do.
Every year, a population as big as 80 percent of Nairobi gets diagnosed with epilepsy across the globe.
And they, like me, go through the emotions of stigma and exclusion.
And so I have made it my life journey to keep these conversations going, and I keep confessing about my affair so that those people who do not have the diagnosis might know and might have a constant reminder that it is alright to engage with people like us, that as long as they pull down the walls of stigma and exclusion, that we, just like them, can be able to take anything life heather68@example.net.
Thank you.
(Applause)