About – Kunihusu

Welcome! — Karibuni!

Usalama is Swahili for safety and security in the contexts of individual, national, and international security.

I graduated from Yale University in 2009 with an MA in African Studies and the following summer worked as a consultant in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. I also have an MS in Global Affairs (Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance) from NYU (2006). I’m bilingual and multi-disciplinary, with ambitions of becoming truly inter-disciplinary. “There is a reason for everything” is more than an emotional or teleological axiom– it applies to political science, economics, anthropology, public health, history, psychology, and just about all the social sciences. You can argue over what the reasons are, but you can’t deny that they exist. It is through the pursuit of these causal relationships, as they play out in all these fields, that solutions to countless problems might be found.

I also believe that context is key. Whatever the discipline, research, practice, intervention, project, or program; cookie-cutter approaches and solutions, which leave no room for flexibility based on context, will not always work. Just because something works in one place does not mean it will work everywhere else. In this sense, I am driven to better understand how the dots can be connected between international policy and local realities. Out of this comes a belief in local consultation and collaboration in both humanitarian and development aid projects. People affected by emergencies or adverse circumstances don’t just sit around waiting for help. They initiate processes themselves that make sense to them, through structures that, prior to the disruption, were familiar and organic to that place. In most cases these structures aren’t completely obliterated but are merely interrupted or damaged. It is a mistake, I think, to treat conflict- and disaster- affected areas as a blank slate, as though people and communities in such places don’t have a history, or any politics, or their own social mechanisms for interpreting and dealing with changes and challenges.  This mistaken approach takes a host of culturally subjective assumptions and applies them to places where those frameworks don’t work or don’t exist.

I am a nuance-appreciator of the nothing-is-black-and-white persuasion.  I may occasionally write about things as though I vehemently believe them, and most of the time I do believe them if I’m committed enough to put it in writing.  But I can’t think of very many things that I wouldn’t be willing to change my mind about should someone say something convincing enough to make me reconsider.  I have had a number of experiences where I have said, written, or thought things that after further reflection I realized were naive, prejudiced, or even just kind of stupid.  I find such realizations to be great learning experiences.  So the processes of debate, self-criticism, and self-reflexivity are extremely important to me in my effort to keep refining the quality of my arguments.  It’s not about me and whether I’m right or wrong; it’s about the substantive issues.  I’m not married to my opinions and I don’t take criticism of them personally.  In that sense, for me, nothing is sacred and I welcome spirited debate.

At this point in my life, I am not certain if I’m an aspiring academic or an aspiring aid worker. I suspect that I’m both. My dream is to work in a peacekeeping mission. I am currently a PhD student at Cambridge University researching Congolese interpretations of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants.

This blog is purely for my own intellectual meanderings and academic explorations.  Opinions, thoughts, philosophical excursions, assertions, etc. are mine and not those of any organization or institution I have had or may have in the future some kind of academic or professional connection to. Much of what I write is for the sake of argument, and while I often try to be explicit by prefacing what I really think by saying “I think that,” I don’t always make the distinction clear. As I believe the important thing is the arguments and their merit, this shouldn’t matter much. I encourage readers and commenters to take the same approach and separate themselves from their arguments, and respect the points of view of others. Abusive, over-aggressive, or inciteful comments will not be published. Civil, well argued, and thoughtful comments that I happen to disagree with will be published with enthusiasm.

Asante sana na karibuni!