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Do the dead speak to the living?
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The remains of the late Festo Masagazi (not real name) a former resident of Katiiti village in Wakiso district have just been transferred from the periphery of Mabira forest where he had been murdered and his body dumped during Obote's II regime.

His brother Polinari Mukasa is sobbing impulsively a few meters away from the new grave as he labours to explain the shocking background in the run up to Masagazi's murder more than three decades ago.

He pauses as other mourners beside him, most of them women holding their heads and others their tummies, burst into uncontrollable wailing.

Narrating to mourners how they had come to that event decades after his brother's death, Mukasa explained as he wiped away tears: "His spirit nearly strangled me to death after arguing me in vain, to collect his bones from under a juniper tree under which he lay in abandon for years, asking me to accord him a decent burial."

"I was forced to organize the family to go and search the forest spot in Mabira, only to find, a beheaded skelton ensconced between two buttresses of a huge juniper tree just as Festo's spirit had intimated," he continued as he pointed at the new grave.   
But Mukasa's ordeal, so to speak, mirrors the experiences of African traditions and cultures where a countless number of people have found themselves having to perform duties apparently on the instructions of the dead.

Captivating stories are rife across the Ugandan society through the media and conversations, almost on a daily basis, of the dead communicating to countless folks through vivid dreams or violent manifestations of Spirits (of the dead) which randomly posses different family members as a way of making their demands (call them dictates) known and enforced.

It is particularly a dilemma for Christians who, through various teachings have learnt that when someone dies, his/her spirit goes back to Heaven and shall not be released until the judgment day before it will proceeds to its final destination.

Live testimonies

Hannington Kalyesubura a resident of Kawempe town is one of those trapped in the dilemma. He narrates that his 8 year old daughter recently burst out in tantrums, under the influence of the spirit of his late father and ordered him to go and erect a shrine at their grave yard away in Namweya village in Mpigi district.

But due to the huge sum of money required to accomplish the task beyond Kalyesubura's meagre earnings, coupled with the lack of cooperation from his two born-again brothers who have baulked at the project as worthless, he is now living in morbid fear of the unknown to happen to his dear life and children as consequences for inaction.  

"My father's spirit promised to kill me and my children if the shrine is not up by the end of this year," Kalyesubura timidly explains.

Another family from Jjumbi village in newly created Gomba district, under instructions [duress] from a similar spirit herded themselves into a minibus and headed to Lukuli Nanganda in Makindye division, to exhume the remains of their relative identified as Phoebe Nazziwa who had died about forty years ago, in order to give her a descent burial on their family grave yard recently.

Hajat Rehema Nakirya, one relative who participated in Nazziwa's exhumation told this writer that they were guided through the long winding path to Nazziwa's old grave site by a 13 year old girl who had never been to Kampala but only acting under the influence of the late Nazziwa's spirit.  

"We were mesmerized to find Nazziwa's remains near a trench to which  the girl directed us!", Nakirya wonders.  

And recently in Para zone of Namasuba along Entebbe road, a young man born of Ugandan and British parents, came and exhumed the remains of his late mother having been allegedly directed by her spirit which used to bother him from as far as London where he was living.

According to witnesses, the spirit told the young man to relocate her remains from the side of the road where she lay for 30 years since her death when the boy was still living in Uganda.

Spirits supporting good causes!

On the other hand, some claims have also been heard of people getting instructions from spirits of their dead relatives to carry out good causes search as drawing hefty sums of money from their accounts to be donated to the poor or to former Christian congregations they once attended or served.

Unravelling the mystery

But the age-old question being asked by many people across religions is; what exactly happens when someone dies? Which also helps to answer the question of how should someone react when faced with visions of such a nature.

While these realities remain normal to those rooted in the African Traditional Religious (ATR) belief that 'the dead continue to live on while associating with the living', it has bread no small controversy to many Ugandans since the advent of Christianity more than a century ago.

It is imperative however, before any body attempts to solve this puzzle in light of Christian teachings, to examine what the Bible teaches about what man comprises of and what happens to him immediately he sinks in the hereafter.  

The Bible, in Ecclesiastes says that man exists in a dichotomy, comprising both the soul and the body which get separated at the moment death occurs; "The dust returns to the ground it came from and the spirit returns to God who gave it." Ecclesiastes 11:7
Another biblical passage; Luke 16:19-31 also teaches that when death occurs of any man, the body, is, except for cultures where cremation is practiced, buried while the soul 'returns to God', who according to the same passage , assigns it to either of two temporary places in  HELL or PARADISE.

"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side [explained as PARADISE]. The rich man also died. And in HELL where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus in his chest" (Luke 16: 22-23)

Scripture further teaches that whereas the souls in paradise will be thereafter ushered into 'eternal life'[rendered as heaven ], those remanded in Hell will, according to Revelation 20:11-15 be transferred to a final destination denoted as 'the lake of fire' after the judgement day.

"The sea gave up the dead that were in it and hell gave up the dead that were in it and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then DEATH and HELL were thrown in the lake of fire." Revelation 20: 13-14   

It can also be interpreted from scripture that the reason why God would assigns souls of the dead to either hell or paradise as temporary places is to have them presented at a later date for judgement on the judgement day.

Can spirits escape from God's custody?

At this point it can be ascertained that on this premise, once the souls are ushered into Hell or Paradise, THEY CAN NEVER RETURN TO EARTH AT WILL AND WRECK HAVOC, to visit living relatives, pass sentences, give directives or ultimatums and punishments as some of the above stories appear to reflect.

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