Humanist

List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.

Job 1 – Academic

Doing research and generating knowledge based on empirical study. Mentoring others, especially those younger in age; and or older but younger in qualitative research experience.

Having the peace of mind and freedom to explore and to learn everyday is a dream job to do and do it well.

I would love to be recognized among academic greats, such as Professor Mahmood Mamdani, father of the New York mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani.

What an achievement it would be, to be among the world’s ‘Top 50 Thinkers’ like Mamdani!

Job 2 – Food farmer

Doing purely organic farming and with minimum ‘modern mechanization’. This would enable me to also engage in knowledge generation, as I would do in Job 1 above – testing and updating knowledge on food systems and agronomic practices of our ancestors.

To be the Junius Gove, of the food systems of our African-Uganda first nations.

“Grove was a formerly enslaved man who revolutionized potato farming techniques in Edwardsville, Kansas. He earned the title by producing more potatoes per acre than anyone else in the world.” This year a documentary about him, “The Potato King: A Dynasty Built on Dirt and Dreams,” was released.

Imagine living such a positively impact filled farming life, like Grove, to the extent it is memorialized for posterity in a documentary!

Job 3 – Journalist

Freelancing, traveling and writing columns and feature stories, through an indigenous Afro-Centric lens that dignifies humanity all round.

“As we stand with journalists around the world who deeply believe that the mission of a journalist is to go to where the silence is, that the responsibility of a journalist is to give a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, beaten down by the powerful – it’s the best reason I know for us to pick up our pens, our microphones and our cameras both into our own communities and out to the wider world. The media can be, must be, a major force for peace.” – Amy Goodman, Right to Livelihood Acceptance Speech

My goal would be to do great humanist journalistic work. “Go to where silence is … give a voice to those have been forgotten, forsaken, beaten down by the powerful,” starting with Uganda first, the Africa and the world.

Being world recognized, such as Goodman is the 2024 Humanist of the Year, would a bonus!

Truthfully, I am already doing a little bit of all the three jobs, but would love to have the freedom to do it full time and do more of it.