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.