Vasta N. Kamara

The celebration of Life- Happy Birthday Kaaka Adyeeri Vasta

Often times, when one hears the words ‘celebration of life’ what comes to mind is someone passed away and now they are going to send the person off with numerous speeches usually positive about how the deceased impacted a life or lives. The deceased has all these good things said about them that they never get to hear or if they do since they are now spirit, we never get to know or hear how the nice sweet words made them feel.

We chose to make it different as our Kaaka Adyeeri Vasta turned 96 this weekend. As a family, our tradition is to meet once every month with all the kids for fellowship, praise, testimonies and prayer.  We agreed to make this meet up different by focusing on just praises to God and telling Kaaka much we love her. Kaaka has unfortunately lost her sight to eye pressure and gets memory lapses but has not forgotten to love and laugh from the heart. It was therefore not difficult to surprise her as she did not remember her birthday.

So the day started off with each family preparing a dish or two since we had ageed it was portlack. We met at moms place in Buwate and there induldged in the numerous scrumptious foods that left many of us full and ready to nap. We did not have the luxury of a nap as we immediately started our fellowship with singing of numerous hymns and songs.  It was so much fun as we sang songs from the different tribes represented; rutooro, runyankole, luganda, rukiga and a bit of English. The kiga and nyankole dances surely helped to break the food down.

It was great watching kaaka join in with her feeble claps and a smile. No doubt it warmed up her heart and she could not stop thanking us making her day and praising God for her life. This gave us so much fulfilment and joy.

At the end of the singing and dancing, all the kids were asked to testify after which Kamara prayed for them as we agreed in prayer and then sent them off to play. The adults continued in the rich fellowship of worship that ended with a prayer in runyankole led by Andrew with focus on our Kaaka.  

We then had the kids join us once again for the long awaited cake cutting moment. Some of them couldn’t wait as we saw the 2year old Shona run a finger over the icing and stuff it into her mouth. We sung for kaaka, took pictures and indulged in the cake.

This was then followed by speeches from each one of us celebrating Kaaka and acknowledging the great influence that she has had in our lives.

It was a day well spent. Thank you Lord for 96 years of a God fearing, loving, generous, strong and beautiful grand mother.