Friendly Fires: Volume II

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Diplomatic service at its best mixes adventure with duty, bestows education through service, and makes friends out of employees.
On the front cover, Bob is on his first trip to Timbuktu in his capacity as US Ambassador to Mali. With him are S kou, his driver en brousse as well as in the country’s capital, Gaoussou, a senior embassy employee who accompanied Bob on official visits all over the country, and Barbara. Those grooves in the sand were, in the late 1980s, the most direct route north, which lay between the Niger, West Africa’s greatest river, and the vast Sahara: Just stay between the river and the scraggly line of telegraph poles and you will get there, we were told. And we did.
The black rhino (below) is a rare and hard to see species. We surprised her, and vice-versa, in one of South Africa’s less visited game parks as she was finishing breakfast and we were returning from a visit to the US Consulate in Durban. Our assignment to South Africa, immediately after the end of apartheid, was an unforgettable end to our joint career as a diplomatic couple.