TO BELIEVE OR NOT TO BELIEVE

As they strolled along the beach, Tilly noticed that the tide had gone a very long way out. She also noticed that the water was frothy before suddenly recalling what her Geography teacher had shown them on the newsreel in an old black and white footage of Hawaii in 1946. At the time, it was the only film anyone had ever seen of a tsunami and in fact, most people had never heard of the word.

Noticing the signs and relating them to what she had watched, Tilly was convinced that a tsunami was about to occur. She tried to get her parents to raise an alarm yet none of them was convinced by her deliberation, not even the lifeguards at the beach. Soon, her parents being Englishmen and afraid of embarrassment acted to avoid an unnecessary commotion. Everyone was evacuated from the beach to the nearby hotel's third and uppermost floors and in no time, the first three giant waves struck.

Those three giant waves struck all beaches all over South East Asia that morning and by the end of the day, over a quarter a million people on beaches in thirteen different countries were dead. It was only on Mai Khao Beach, Thailand where no one died. Later, she was taken to UN where she was publicly congratulated by Bill Clinton for saving the lives of over 100 people.

In the same year, 2004, a month before the tsunami occured, a thousand miles away from the places of the events, a young man, Elvis had foretold the event and even stated the place and date on which it would occur, December 24th.

While the lives of many were saved by heeding the pleas of little Tilly, several others on whose beach was no Tilly to warn them succumbed to the tsunami. If only the warning of Elvis had been equally documented and subsequently considered, perhaps more lives would have been saved.

During the days that closed in to the World Cup Final of 2010, another warning was given. At one of his weekly meetings, Prophet Elvis foretold the twin bomb blasts that wrecked the lives of many soccer fans on the night of July 11th, 2010. After he foresaw these events, he reached out to the security operatives but was ignored with his "predictions" regarded as being baseless. In that year, more than 70 people who had gathered at Kyadondo Rugby Grounds and at the Ethiopian Village, Kabalagala lost their lives in spite of the forewarning.

Somalia was facing a very tough time for decades. There was insecurity and many of the country's citizens had fled the country to seek refuge somewhere else. Uganda, under the peace keeping mission, AMISON paraded thousands of their soldiers to go and fight off the rebels in the bid to restore peace. In 2012, UPDF embarked on one of its most prominent "leak proof" missions of all time in which they would send an airforce crew of two fighter choppers to the war torn nation.

According to the testimony by the Somalia-based rebel group, Al-Shabab, the 2010 bombings were engineered as a response to Uganda's interference in Somalia's political affairs. Two months before the final execution of this mission, on two separate occasions at his weekly meetings in 2012, Prophet Elvis foresaw the crash of these choppers. Like he did in 2010, he once again reached out to the concerned parties who gave a deaf ear to what they referred to as, "scanty predictions."

Two weeks after the last prophecy on the event, the crash of two Ugandan UPDF Choppers en route Somalia at the Kenyan Mountain was a front page story and major headline. This failure was one of UPDF's most costly missions and cost the taxpayers a leg. It can be agreed that better to the Forces, were the horses and chariots, than mere prophecies.

Countless global events that have claimed hundreds of lives have been foretold yet we continuously reject them only to suffer the regret. Perhaps one thing we tend to skip is that our dismissal of reality doesn't nullify its existence. Reality tarries on in spite of the fact that we may delusively rebut its consequential discomfort. To seek 'better' from the Prophet while simultaneously finding offence from his pompous lifestyle is like trying to woo a girl whose entire character disgusts you yet you are intrigued by her satisfactory results in life.

Through his prophecies over the years, Prophet Elvis Mbonye's existence has been of more benefit to those who know and don't know him; as well as to those who receive and reject him. From the averting of major global catastrophes such as the plane crash landing on a US busy street, the twin bridge collapse still in the US, the attempted assassination of DRC's president, and the February 2016 failed coup in Uganda, you cannot deny the results of his words and clear detailing of these events way before they happen.

The peculiarity about him that greatly sets him apart from Tilly is that he does not have to first notice the signs before speaking of the succeeding events, no! Rather, he foretells these events, and describes the signs that precede them. Therefore, to accuse him of trickery is to charge him for stage-managing the future yet even so, who wouldn't wish to capitalize on knowing, with such exactitude, what the future held?! And if this were the attitude we bore, what then shall we do about the prognoses he'll give given the track record of the hundreds of documented prophecies that have all come to pass?

By Mukisa Bruno Malbie
The Writer is a member of the National Christian Students Association.