My first encounter with Botswana was as an 11-year old boy, riding the train from Ndola via Bulawayo to Johannesburg in 1960, on my second trip to Canada. I remember being intrigued by the curio-sellers at Sashi Siding, and determining in my mind that one day I hoped work in Botswana. CUSO was the first to give me that opportunity. CUSOBOT also provided a social network and community that was both challenging and supportive.
I came to Botswana as one of the first 2 District Officers/Land (the other was Neil Dunford) working under the Central District Commissioner. After 3 years, I was recruited to the Department of Town and Regional Planning, and later became the Senior Planner (North) based in Francistown and covering the northern half of the country, with administrative and management responsibilities. DTRP was the first Government Department to “localise” its staff, I was one of the last expats to leave. But the Department immediately started using aid-financed consultants to support it, and seemed to appreciate hiring those that had worked previously as staff. (“Better the devil you know...” and all that!) So I returned some years later in a team on which at least 3 of us were former staff members. The responsibilities imposed on DODs and DOLs as well as on staff within DTRP were often well beyond what similarly aged staff would have in Canada or Europe. At both local and national levels I had to address innumerable issues in fields I was academically totally unqualified for. So working in Botswana was professionally an incredibly stretching process. It led to such a wide variety of experience that I was acceptable for work in (re-)establishment of a Land Use Planning Institute (Lesotho); land restitution (RSA) and reformation (Tajikistan), writing urban and regional planning guidelines based on real life pilots (Egypt), doing participatory land and natural resource management (Lesotho), soil erosion studies (high Andes of Ecuador), drafting a regional tourism strategy (Zimbabwe), plus taking on assignments in all aspects of project design, management, and evaluation. One thing stands out though, and that is the difference that a stable, peaceful, and participatory democracy makes to a successful development.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Add a ReflectionWhat was the lasting impact of the CUSO Botswana experience on the rest of your life? How did it change you? How did it affect your values, beliefs, actions? Your thoughts on the meaning of the experience are important to all of us and to Cuso International (200 words max). Email your reflection to: Archives
June 2019
Categories |