Catching up: Gaborone, Botswana (August 2010)

Four days after returning from Malaysia, I boarded a plane to begin the trek east to Botswana.  This trip took us through a middle-of-the-night fuel stop in Dakar, Senegal and an overnight near the airport in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Once in Gabarone (capitol of Botswana), we were taken to the hotel and conference center where we would spend the next few days.

The purpose of this trip was to attend, support, and present at the first international conference of the Botswana Counseling Association.  NBCC was instrumental in helping with efforts to organize counselors in Botswana and provided support for this conference.  International participants at the conference were primarily the NBCC contingent (3 of us) and a trio of counselors from Nigeria.  I was the second keynote speaker, following an assistant Minister of Education who pledged support for counselor credentialing efforts in the country.  A credentialing bill for counselors will be considered by the national legislature in 2011.

My keynote on supervision was well-reeived and seemed to generate a lot of interest among conference participants.  Our hosts and everyone else at the conference were warm, gracious, and welcoming and the whole experience only served to renew my interest in spending more time in Africa.  Only three months ago, I had never been to the continent at all, and now have made 2 trips to 4 African countries.  The counseling profession is making good progress in Botswana, and the anticipated passage of credentialing legislation next year should give them a big boost.

We ended this trip by spending a day and a half in far northeastern Botswana (at the intersection of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), visiting Victoria Falls just across the border in Zimbabwe, then looking for game in the river and gamelands of Chobe National Park.

Catching up: Penang, Malaysia (August 2010)

In late July, I traveled to Malaysia to deliver a keynote presentation (with Dr. Tom Clawson) on credentialing at the 18th Biannual Conference of the Association of Psychological and Educational Counselors of Asia Pacific (APECA), held in Penang, Malaysia.  On the way there, we overnighted in Singapore and met with an Indian psychiatrist interested in exploring possible linkages with NBCC.  We spent our first couple of days exploring Langkawi a beautiful island off the northwest coast of Malaysia. To get there required a 3-hour ferry from Penang.  On the island, we worked together informally, took a cruise through a tropical rainforest, and visited a batik factory where most of us purchased some of the many different kinds of batik products and where we watched as local artists created batik designs.


The conference chair was Dr. Susie See, a very dynamic Malaysian counselor educator who had previously spent time at NBCC on her research leave.  Conference participants included counselors and other helping professionals from 17 countries.  The NBCC delegation was welcomed very warmly by everyone and we made lots of new friends and connections during the 5 days of the conference.  We stayed in a part of Penang (Georgetown) that has recently been designated as a World Heritage Site.  During the conference, a ceremony was held to officially sign the Memorandum of Understanding that created NBCC-Malaysia.  As Chair, I was the designated signer, and it was an honor to participate in this important creation of an official partnership with counselors in Malaysia.

On the way back to the U.S in mid-August, we once again stayed overnight in Singapore and had the chance to eat dinner at Raffles, a famous bar where the mixed drink Singapore Sling was created.  Our travel time each way of this trip was about 36 hours (including layovers).

Catching up: San Francisco (June/July 2010)

I kicked off my year as NBCC Board Chair with attendance at the annual National Career Development Association conference in San Francisco.  Immediately preceding that conference was the conference of the International Association of Educational and Vocational Counseling, an organization with which NBCC has had ties for many years.  At this meeting, I officially accepted the gavel from Past-Chair, Kurt Kraus, who also attended.