The Life of Philip

Recently, the friend I visited in Kampala asked me if I'd write something about my time with her for her newsletter she is sending back to friends and family. I thought it might be nice for you to be able to read it as well. Here it is with a couple modifications.

Greetings from Kampala! I'm sitting in my hotel room writing this in between going to a slum church and heading out for a walk and the Internet cafe where I will send this. The bright blue mosquito net is blowing in the breeze created by the ceiling mounted fan above my bed. It's much quieter outside than it was last night.

I will try to recount some of last week, but some of it you won't care for the details of, while other experiences I am still processing and can't verbalize correctly yet.

I love the multitude of cultures I am surrounded by and working with at this consultation.

I love it when Africans look sidelong, exposing the contrasting white of their eyes against their pupils and skin.

My resume will now say that I worked with a global organization as a multi-cultural communication consultant and trainer.

I was in the south of the equator for a couple hours transferring flights in Nairobi and soaked in my beloved southern hemisphere.

Over the past year or two, I've intermittently talked with a close friend of mine who is a missionary with his wife in Hungary about the possibility of going to Budapest to do website development for their missionary base. A couple weeks ago I was put in contact with the lady who is in charge of the communications for the Youth With A Mission Central European office. Apparently, YWAM CE would like to do a communications/media/tech workshop there eventually. I was very excited to hear about this as it would fit in so well with our previous ideas. But during our conversation I was told about a global YWAM communication conference happening in Uganda. This would give me the over-arching vision to help me understand the situation of YWAM communications.

Just over two weeks later, I've decided go. Two weeks from now, I will leave!

So what is this all about? Let me explain a bit more about the conference.

I was reading a book a couple weeks ago. In one scene the main character was visiting a nation of people as a dignitary. The leader of one of the clans, who spoke for his people, betrayed their sacred law of hospitality and tried to inconspicuously have the hero killed (yeah, apparently assassination is not good hospitality, take note). In punishment the rest of the clan leaders decided to banish not only that evil leader, but the entire clan from the rest of the nation. They completely ignored them. They did not exist and would not hear them if they spoke. It was kind of an eerie point in the book where the main character realizes just how intense the punishment is and feels a pang of pity for someone who is doomed to complete and utter exile.

Today I read an article about teenager criminals and how some of them, depending on their crime and state of residence, are sentenced to life in prison. Of those, some are not given a chance at parole. One sentence stood out to me. "They argued that judges give certain criminals, regardless of their age, life sentences because the crimes are so abhorrent."

Abhorrent.

I had never really thought about us as a society deciding that some crimes were so bad as to lock someone away for life with no chance at being released later. The debate has always been to keep the death sentence or not. But this is modern day banishment. If you're 13 or 14 years old, that is heavy. I don't agree that a minor should given a sentence for life with no parole. Exiled for a lifetime before you even turn 18 or 21? Wow. No, I don't think that's right. Think on that.