Husen, the son of a former askari officer, served together with his father in World War I with German colonial troops in East Africa.

Husen worked as a waiter and in various minor jobs in language tutoring and in smaller roles in various Africa-related German film productions.

Husen was born in Dar es Salaam, then part of German East Africa, as the son of an askari who held the rank of Effendi.

He used his Swahili in language courses for officials and security personnel and as a low paid tutor in university classes, e.g. for the famous scholar, Diedrich Westermann.

The German authorities were not willing to bestow the order upon "coloureds" in general, and Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck appeared to have explicitly ruled out the case of Husen in a letter to the foreign office.

Husen nevertheless wore the badge and an askari uniform which he probably bought from a military supplies dealer during his participation in rallies of the German neo-colonialist movement [de], which sought to reclaim Germany's lost colonies.

Thereafter, Husen lost his main income as a waiter in the Haus Vaterland pleasure palace in 1935 after being dismissed due to racialist complaints by two co-workers.

He stopped working for the university in April 1941, allegedly after being mistreated by Prof Martin Heepe [de], an Africanist and linguistic expert.