Remembrances of Kim from her friends
The following rememberings of Kim were sent to the Perez family and the MSU African Studies Center. They are presented anonymously and without attribution since at this date permission has not been given by the authors to publish them.
Kim and I met for the first time only a few weeks ago in Kaduna, where my fiancée and I were completing research this summer (we are both Ph.D. students in political science at Columbia University). We met Kim a few times right before and right after her trip to Ibadan. She seemed well and excited about her research, and was very kind in helping us get set up. I remember how she shared, without hesitating, a long list of contacts from her large pile of business cards with my fiancée, who is working on a topic related to Kim's dissertation.
Kim and I met at The Fletcher School (Boston). She was friendly, driven, intelligent, studious, fun-loving and accepting of everyone. My life in Fletcher and after was definitley richer for having known Kim. What amazed me most was her passion for my continent Africa and how she devoted her life to helping the people and communities she lived with.
Kim will be sorely missed by her family and friends and it pains me to think of the loss her death brings to Africa and humanity. However, I am encouraged that Kim's spirit will live on through the love and compassion she showed others as well as through her work and academic achievements.
I lived with Kim during my first year, her second year, at Fletcher. Five of us lived in a house together, and we had a fantastic, special time together. We feel so lucky to have had that year with her, and have been emailing a lot in the last few days about how terrible this is, remembering our time with Kim, and thinking about what we can do for Kim's family. We are all in different parts of the world right now, from Kosovo to Thailand (where I am writing you from), so it's helping a lot to keep in constant touch over email.
I cant begin to tell you how sad and tragic your news is not just for her family but for the friends who loved admired and respected her. Kim's passing is also a huge loss for the society which she so wanted to serve once her education had been completed.
Let me tell you a bit about my relationship with Kim. I was her undergraduate teacher at UCSC and her adviser In due course we became friends and professional colleagues. Our relationship began quite dramatically. Kim was a student in one of my large course on Human Rights. Her work was solid but as a student she was somewhat lost in a sea of other students. The next term found us both in Washington DC. at the Univ of Californias Washington program. Kim became a student in my seminar and all seemed well until the draft of her term paper was due. I read the paper and as before could tell that she was very bright but the essay was poorly organized and written and I made a note telling her to come see me that the essay needed to be rewritten before I would pass her. Kim came to my office in tears. No one had ever criticized her work so harshly and why was I picking on her? She was so distraught that she wondered if I were in fact racist and picking on her. I told her that quite to the contrary that I thought she was very smart and would go far but that I was not giving her a pass because "she was a minority" student but rather wanted her to learn to write better so she could realize her ambitions.
After this dramatic encounter which we joked about for years we became bonded. I urged her to accept the Peace C assignment to South Africa and we corresponded extensively while she was in South Africa I wrote glowing letters to graduate schools urging them to accept her and telling them have much intelligence, ambition and pluck Kim had. I was delighted when Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy not only accepted her but awarded her a large fellowship. I know she struggled and indeed she asked me help her, and I gave her feedback the summer she was re-writing her MA thesis. I was delighted when she was accepted into the Michigan State Ph D program and we corresponded by email and letter about the difficult road of obtaining a doctorate. Again, she succeeded, and again she got support to go to Nigeria and we all know she would have finished her PhD and become a great professor herself or perhaps also work in other vineyards on African development issues.
Kim's passing is indeed a tragic loss to us all. You have lost a daughter and sister and i have lost one of my favorite former student and a friend. I feel a little responsible since my enthusiasm for development issues and my own specialization in Africa no doubt encouraged Kim to go that route. But I also know that had I never encouraged her Kim on her own was committed to helping people in less developed countries, decided to stay with African affairs because she like I was taken by Africa and Africans. Kim and I also had something else in common namely our backgrounds ( I was an immigrant to this country and had to struggle through school )We often discussed our respective struggles and concluded that that gave us the inner steel to succeed in spit of obstacles. I think it is the latter that bonded us.
I will miss Kim. I last heard from her from Nigeria where she was clearly doing admirable research. I admired her, respected her and most important really liked her she had morphed from former student to friend.
I met Kim in Mexico in 1998 and travelled with her through South Africa in 2002. Last year she visited me shortly in The Netherlands.
What I remember most about her is the true passion she felt for people and her dedication to doing good in this world. Her personality and the way she lived her life was truly inspirational. It always made me happy to hear from her, to find out about her latest adventures and accomplishments and most of all to feel our special connection and friendship. Even though we only had occasional contact, I will miss her very much, for I have lost a beautiful person in my life, whom I am proud and tremendously grateful to have known.